War in the Heavens
by Therix
Summary: Sixty years ago, a group of smugglers stumbled across a gem of immense power. They thought to sell it for a premium, but then the gem was lost to a group of freelancers. In the present day, Miles 'Tails' Prower delves into the past on a search for that gem, pursued by a mysterious foe and an old friend.
1. Prologue

**Sixty years ago, south of Mobotropolis…**

_"I hope you know what the hell you're doing."_

_"Course I do, they won't know what hit them." The other figure replied, as his knife chattered against the tumblers in the lock. As each part rotated there came a barely audible click, and the figure gave a barely perceptible nod to match as he slowly cut his way through the door security._

_After five tense minutes, the last click sounded in the crude bionics of one of the figures, and the door cracked open a notch with a squealing creak._

_"Shit! Shit! Watch the noise!" his accomplice whispered frantically._

_"You're too hyped-up about this, Wesker, calm down or I will drop you too."_

_"Frag you." Wesker replied. Wesker was a badger, about three feet tall with black & white striped fur. He had covered himself in brick-dust and black paint for this little operation, but the job had not been thorough and patches of white showed brightly against the moonlight._

_His companion, Syna, was a lynx. She stood at four foot three inches, and her dark brown fur was a tangled mass of knots and links. Unlike Wesker, who wore only a ragged olive-green overcoat and a pair of black panelled gloves, Syna had on her a black body glove, utility belt and combat boots._

_"Alright, now, let's get what we came for and get out of here." She told the badger, before notching the door open a little further and edging inside the substation._

__

"Why are we-" Wesker began, but Syna clamping a hand over his mouth silenced him quickly, and with her free hand she pointed out the watchman, asleep against a chair, rocket back slightly against a line of power cables. Lowering her hands, she slid a small syringe free of the belt and attached a needle. For a moment she held it to the single, flickering, dim light that swung ponderously in the middle of the room, and inspected the blue fluid within. Then, moving on the balls of her feet, crept over to the sleeping guard, a spider wearing a dull grey uniform, and quickly stabbed him in the neck with the needle, swiftly entering the contents into his neck. He jerked forward, suddenly awake and lurched from the chair, hands moving to the half-a-dozen truncheons he had on his belt before the contents of the little syringe took over and his willpower drained away. His arms went from the frantic motion to hanging limply by his side, and his black, unreflective eyes took on a glazed look, all eight of them. Wesker moved past him, and began to work at the consoles, occasionally stopping to clip a wire in the large voltage boxes with a pair of insulated wire-cutters. Away in Mobotropolis, a very concentrated area of the city suddenly found itself devoid of power. Then the badger placed one had at his ear, listening intently for a moment.

__

"The others are in position, we can proceed."

_Syna did not reply, merely nodding, keeping her gaze on the spider. "Where is the hatch?" she asked the disempowered guard, who, after a few seconds, raised one hand slowly to a slightly slouching point to the corner of the single room._

_Syna thanked him with a smiling nod, more out of social instinct than any real need, then injected him with a second vial that stopped his heart. He toppled soundlessly onto the concrete, but with a loud, cracking impact._

_Wesker finished with the consoles and packed up, following Syna to the small trapdoor in the corner. The lynx had already pried it open and was waiting for him impatiently. She waited for him to begin his climb down the ladder within, then followed him, giving the room a quick glance before shutting the door behind them both and climbing down herself._

* * *

** Present day… **

The crime, the motive, the suspects, all were based on rumour, and the MUCSI were finding it infuriating. The MUCSI, or Mobian Unsolved Crime Scene Investigation service, dealt with jobs like this, solving cases that had been closed pending investigation, to be opened and solved at a later date in lieu of more urgent cases. Most officers from the Mobian Security Wing thought of it as well-paid early retirement.

"So, motive?"

"Money, I guess. Don't see why anyone would have taken it otherwise."

"Locations?"

"One in North Block B-14, one in a substation couple miles south."

"Shit, take it that means we don't know who the suspects are?"

"Course we don't, MPD don't give us shit these days and you know it. On top of that, this thing is meant to be so important that even though the case happened half a century ago we still have to solve it!"

* * *

** Sixty years ago, Mobotropolis, North Block B-14…**

_Three figures crouched at the edge of the district, hidden from the streetlights by the enclosing shadows of a stinking alleyway. Across the dimly illuminated street was a warehouse. Used for storing consumables such as foodstuffs and medical supplies, it would be no wonder if anyone were to discover than the trio were about the make a break-in. What would have surprised them was that they weren't interested in the warehouse, but rather what was under it._

_"Why the hell aren't they done yet?" The lead figure whispered in hushed tones, "it's past time!"_

_"Chill, amigo, you'll give ussss away…" the second whispered back, with an accompanying half-silent cackle, causing the first to shrink up. No-one liked snakes, especially the ones with a sense of humour._

_Yes, the second of the three was a snake, green, reflective scales clicking almost silently in the night, a pair of sinewy arms sprouting from the body just below the hooded head. Only an adder, perhaps, but a snake that big didn't need venom; the fangs were big enough and a snake could crush you before you could scream._

_"Guys, keep it down! I heard something!" the third and final figure whispered back._

_"You're a field mousssse, Jericho, you're jussst paranoid." The snake hissed at him._

_"Maybe, but healthy paranoia has kept me alive so far."_

_"It won't ssssave you from me, if you don't sssshut it." The snake flicked his tongue out at the field mouse, who did not return from his hunched position, tail flicking erratically as he registered every sound of the night. The mouse cowered, cursing his luck. No-one liked snakes, maybe, but he was a mouse. For him it was practically a phobia. The only reason he had agreed to go with the warehouse group was because he was the only one of the three who knew how to pick locks, and Wesker had needed Syna, Wesker himself not being a very competent combatant._

_It wasn't a great life, but it got him by and at the moment, that was what mattered._

__

The lights went out, and the lead figure, a white-furred coyote, put one hand to his ear and whispered. "Lights out, confirmed." Then to the other two, "let's go."

_The three left the cover of the alleyway, moving fast to avoid being seen, up to the gate of the warehouse compound, where a guard waited behind a rail in a small pillbox._

_The coyote motioned for the other two to stop, and unclipped a pistol and silencer from his belt._

_"Laser-link." He muttered to himself, and the eyepiece he wore clicked as it calculated bullet trajectory, eventually coming up with where the bullet would land. He raised the gun and pulled the trigger, once. There was a soft _thup_ as the bullet left the chamber along the silencer, then a slightly more audible _thump_ as the corpse hit the ground._

_The three of them slipped under the barrier and across the compound to the warehouse door._

_"Aight, Jericho, you're up." The snake whispered, slipping aside for the trembling mouse to get to the lock. He fumbled with the pick for a few seconds before the lock clicked._

_"They must have no idea what's in here." He told them, "the lock was barely even that."_

_He edged the door open for them, and the unlikely party slipped inside. _

* * *

**Present day… **

"Er, boss? What did they actually steal?"

"Some sort of gem, or crystal, or something. Meant to have been worth loads."

"Who wanted us to suddenly up and search for it?"

"I think his name was Miles Prower…that freedom fighter guy."

"They must have been lying, I swear, why would he care?"

"Definitely him, he walked into my office and explained in pretty clear terms. And freedom fighters need money, same as the rest of us."

"I suppose, but why this? Isn't there some cheaper way for him to get money?"

"Probably, but if he wants it, we get it for him. He's paying us handsomely for it."

"Something is off here…"

"I know the feeling, but you do want that pension, don't you?"

* * *

** Sixty years ago, south of Mobotropolis… **  
_The tunnels went on forever, it seemed to Wesker. His eyes ha_

_d some natural night vision, but his particular family had the gift of short-sightedness, and so he was practically clinging to Syna as she made her way along, her night vision flawless. The tunnel was dank and long, the walls practically lost behind a mass of ominously groaning pipes and tanks, the contents of which Wesker did not want to discover._

_After what seemed like forever, a small red light appeared, another five minutes, the source was there. A safety light, casting a glow over a doorway where a pair of Echidna stood watch. They were still out of earshot._

_"Now any ideas, princess?" Wesker whispered forward to Syna, who bristled in response._

_"Of course I have, now be quiet." She reached down to her belt and removed a pistol, custom make, modified to shoot the syringes she was so fond of. Raising it, she pulled the trigger twice, firing two vials of the heart-stopper into the Echidna guards. They didn't see it coming; by the time they registered the contents being emptied into their neck, they were already dead, hitting the floor with two resounding cracks. The two Mobians crept from their hiding space behind a sizeable tank and moved to the door._

__

"Now, get that open." Syna whispered to her companion.

_Wesker slid a small cuboid out of his pack and fixed it to the door with a powerful electromagnet, and began tapping rapidly on the keypad taped to one end of it. In a series of clicks and clunks, the locks disengaged and the door swung open soundlessly…to the surprise of the wasp on the other side, about to open it himself._

_Syna acted without hesitation, springing forward, clamping one had over his mouth and slitting his throat in one ergonomic motion, the blood pooling around him on the floor._

_"Damn, I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that yet." She muttered. Using the same knife, she sliced off the tip of the wasp's sting and using a ceramic vial, she collected the venom. It wasn't great for killing, but mixed with a minor quantity of grease it made an excellent paralysis mixture._

_"Do you have to do that now?" Wesker asked a little frantically, "we still have to get in and get out again, can't you find some other victim for your weird alchemy?"_

__

"You collect when you can, I don't see why it's a problem."

_Wesker scowled. Syna finished collecting the venom and stood, continuing without another word. The corridor was shorter this time, and the pair found themselves in a wide chamber, Syna guessed was a water purification plant for the city._

_"As good a smuggler's den as any, I suppose." She remarked casually, "I bet hardly anyone comes down here." She glanced back to Wesker, "how long until the others get here?"_

_"Give them a minute." He replied._

_"Wait here, then; I'm going to look around." And without waiting for an answer she sprinted low and quiet, to one of the massive water tanks, and began scaling the ladder._

_Wesker put one hand on his pistol – somehow, it didn't reassure him to have it._

* * *

** Present day… **

"Warehouse was unlocked, signs of forced entry…one guard killed; single bullet wound. Contents of the warehouse weren't touched."

"Then what were they here for?"

"Fragged if I know, maybe whatever it was they came for wasn't here."

"maybe the sweep will come up with something."

"Bloody hope so, or we won't get paid."

"Sir! We've found something."

"What is it?"

"A trapdoor – rusted shut, haven't managed to force it open yet. Want us to send someone down there when we manage to prise it open?"

"Get to it, send two men. It isn't much, but it's the only clue we have."

* * *

** Sixty years ago, beneath Mobotropolis… **

_"Guys! I can hear it again!" Jericho whispered, clutching the sides of his head._

_"Shut up-" the coyote began, but the snake cut him off._

_"No…I can hear it too. Sssome sssort of sssinging but not sssinging…"_

_"You're both mad- what are we after again?"_

_"It'sss called a sssuper emerald, by mossst."_

_"Look! There she is!" The coyote was almost glad to see Syna, balancing athletically atop one of the massive containers. He knew she could see them, so he waved at her. She returned it with a sly wink and a two-fingered salute. He returned his attention to the centre of the room. Around a large stash of crates sat the smugglers, an assortment of foxes, echidnas, wasps and other Mobian varieties. They were casually playing cards over a table, unaware than their guards were dead and that there was a lynx adept at killing hanging over their heads._

_"Melor, over there." The coyote indicated to the snake, pointing at a stack of crates on their side of the smugglers. Melor gave a mock salute with his tail before sliding off, moving flat on the ground, lower than any of the others could go, a shotgun strapped to his back and braces of shells looped round him. He reached the crates, giving the other two a thumbs-up before sliding the gun off his back, pre-racked._

__

"Jericho, you're on overwatch." The coyote told the field mouse, handing him a case containing the sniper rifle. Jericho nodded, swinging round a pipe and scaling it with the claws in his hands, to the gantry than ran round the length of the room up high. When he reached the top he opened the case and assembled the sniper rifle with a practised speed of several years of experience.

_Below, Temris, the coyote, counted to thirty before moving. He couldn't risk having Jericho signal him, so they worked under the timing system. He sprinted forward, low and fast, joining Melor at the crate. They were too close to talk now, so he gave the snake a few curt signals before raising three fingers to Syna on the tank above._

_One._

_Two._

_Three._

_Melor and Temris rose from behind cover and began firing. Two of the bandits died before they knew what was happening, and a third had his neck snapped as Syna dropped on him from above. Two bolted, and the echoing bang of the sniper rifle discharge silenced them permanently._

_That left about twenty to contend with. Four against twenty. Temris wasn't happy about the odds, but they had the element of surprise and they had him._

__

A beam of heat flicked across his shoulder, leaving an angry red scorch mark and spoiling his aim. He found the offender and fired a bolt through his brain. By the time the smugglers had organised themselves, they were down another four; sixteen left.

_Fire began to wing their way, an assortment of pistols and bolt-action rifles, Melor was becoming ever more conscious of the fire he was attracting. Snakes were rare, and their scales were quite expensive. On top of that, he was putting out the most weight of fire. He fire with his hands, reloading with his tail, and he was down half of his ammunition already. The smugglers had taken positions behind crates, and now the team were firing more conservatively, conscious of hitting the emerald. They didn't know which crate it was in. A smuggler raised his head from behind cover and the crack of the sniper rifle blew the back out of his head and he slumped back._

__

Temris unclipped a grenade from his belt, pausing as he saw the alarm on Melor's face.

_"Look, jackass!" he pointed through a gap in the crates. Melor followed his gaze to a steel contained, where the smugglers were concentrated. "I figure that it's the most expensive thing here, they want to keep it safe. They put it in a crate, when shit hits the fan, they crowd around it. I throw a frag in, bob's your uncle."_

_"And Sssyna?"_

_"That's her problem." Temris shrugged, pulling the pin and lobbing the armed explosive over the crates. His aim was true and it clanked loudly on the concrete behind the crates where half the smugglers stood, and the space became a charnel house when the grenade went off. None there survived. Seven left._

_One tried to surrender, rising with his arms raised, but Syna sunk a syringe into his back from a distance and he slumped forward on the crates, dead.  
The others were smarter – something punched through the gap between plates and sunk into Temris' shoulder. "Shit." He exclaimed, as the blood began to coat his fur._

_"You fine to keep going?" Melor asked him._

_"Gah…yea, just…give me a moment." He was aware of the pain in his voice, but the emerald was what mattered. "Go…go on…I'll watch the door." He sat back against the crates, mind sharpened by the pain._

_Melor shrugged, snaking out from behind the crates to flank one of the remaining groups, slinking round the crates and emptying his shotgun into them. One fired two shots before dying, one of them scoring along his arm and drawing blood, but with no serious damage. Three left._

_The remaining three turned to run, Syna silenced one with a syringe, but her second flew wide. A second fell to a sniper bullet. The third thought himself free, but that belief was shattered as Wesker stepped out from behind one of the tanks and swung a hefty length of wood at the fleeing smuggler. The beam cracked loudly against his face and the man fell. Syna jogged over, jabbing him with a vial of poison to make sure._

__

"Not bad, but I thought you were a non-combatant?"

_"Can't let you have all the fun." He told the lynx. "Now, let's get the crate open. He walked over to it, relaxed now the danger was past, and began fiddling with the various locks and devices he was fixing onto it. It took him ten minutes of piss-taking, but eventually the lid opened slowly, and he lifted out a gem, slightly larger than his fist, glowing a bright red._

_Syna snatched it from him and sprinted away._

_"Hey! What-" Wesker stopped, and looked down, seeing a blade protruding from his chest, wet with his own blood. Then he heard a gun discharge behind him, and later a loud crack as who he assumed was Jericho, hit the ground from the gantry._

_"It'sss nothing persssonal…jussst businessss." He felt the blade drawn from him and he fell to the ground, body refusing to follow orders._

_"It it'sss any consssolation…Temrisss is dead too."_

_Those were the last words he heard, before he died, unremembered, below Mobotropolis in a water processing plant._

* * *

** Present day… **

"The hatch won't open, so we're, moving to light explosives."

"Make sure you clear the area around it, we don't want the stuff in this warehouse to catch fire."

"Already working on it."

"How goes the work, officer?"

"Mr Prower! I did not expect you to-"

"Does that matter? How is work proceeding?"

Officer Brumlin stiffened, suitable chastened by the sixteen year old fox that stood in front of him. Brumlin was a panther, and unused to being bossed around by anyone, especially those younger than him but a good thirty years, but it did not bode well to insult your benefactor.

"We have found very little so far- a trapdoor, rusted shut, but apart from that we are going on records over fifty years old, Mr Prower."

Miles 'Tails' Prower was a vulpine, a fox. Standing at about four foot seven inches, he was about average Mobian height in his maturity. His fur, yellow, covered his entire body except for his chest and the tips of his twin tails, his namesakes, that swished impatiently behind him. Like most Mobians, he wore only shoes and gloves, but there was also the peculiarity of the chaos emerald he had in his chest.

"Well, have you sent anyone to the substation, like I requested?"

"Yes, Mr Prower, but the team hasn't called in yet, so I assume they haven't found anything."

"Never assume anything in this line of work, Brumlin, I have never found it particularly safe."


	2. Chapter 1

"You mentioned a hatch?" Tails asked Brumlin, who was now beginning to fidget uncomfortably.

"Yes, Mr Prower, this way." He turned and marched briskly off in the direction of the warehouse, Tails in tow.

"Call me Tails, it doesn't take as long." The fox followed, adjusting the pair of golden rings on his wrists.

A couple of the investigators on the team gave him wary looks as he entered, but he dismissed them. Why should he care? They had no idea why he had asked them to complete the case, they had no idea what could be at stake. Helots and tools, he thought. Perhaps a cruel way to think of them, but that was how he worked these days. Some Mobians were expendable, others weren't.

"Just here." Brumlin told him, stepping out of his way to show the team working to fix an explosive pack to the surface of a supremely rusted panel of metal.

Shouldering them aside, Tails knelt down next to the grate and shifted the pack out of the way. Then Brumlin got a surprise; working one of his tails with alarming dexterity, he pistoned it through the rusted panelling, piercing the metal and pulling the trapdoor from the concrete floor, bolts and all.

Brumlin bristled in alarm – how could the boy's tails do that? As if sensing the officer's thoughts, Tails told him, "I'm chaos adept, officer, it's not hard."

Those close by shuffled over to peer into the inky depths of the shaft, but after a few moments of staring Tails concluded that it was most definitely a shaft.

He stood, patted Brumlin on the shoulder and wished him luck with the rest of the investigation, then in full view of the entire team, swan-dived into the pit.

As the light above him shrank and then disappeared, his own natural night vision kicked in, taking in the barest of light and then being supplemented by his chaos emerald that was beginning to vibrate within his chest. In free fall he tapped it, wonderingly. "What's wrong with you then, hmm?" he mused, but he knew. There was chaos radiation close, leftover by something that had been here before.

Aware of the ground racing up to meet him, he began to spin his tails, dramatically reducing his speed and his feet thudded onto solid ground in a dark, unassuming tunnel. Now he was down here, away from the public eye, he was a bit freer to use more…unorthodox methods. He opened his hand and a small golden ring appeared in his palm. He began tossing it, watching intently the pattern of spin and speed. Eventually he stopped, apparently satisfied, and stowed the ring, beginning his walk down the tunnel. It continued to be bland for most of the journey, much to his dissatisfaction, and he found himself thinking of the old days. When he was a kid and Sonic had been a little more reckless, things had been different then...

Coming back to reality, he saw in the darkness that the tunnel ended a short way ahead, and hurried towards it, footfalls echoing the length and coming back to him, giving the impression that he was not the only one there. The corridor ended in a wide, tall chamber, the reaches of which were lost in darkness. He began to call up rings, flicking them off into the room at various points. As each one reached a designated distance, it burst into flame, lighting up the room bit by bit.

A dozen rings proved to be plentiful illumination for the large chamber, and Tails finally saw the scene. Corpses, nigh on thirty of them, he counted at first glance, at various positions and stages of decay, all clustered around a selection of crates in the middle of four massive silos of water.

"An old water pump station." Tails told himself, "must have been closed down when I installed the newer systems…used as a smugglers den while still in use. Either they killed each other over a dispute, or…" he glanced down at the closest corpse, a mouse of some variety clutching an ancient version of a rifle. "someone wanted something of theirs. No uniform, so I assume either vigilantes or thieves."

He walked calmly over to one of the crates, the one he judged to be least covered in dried blood, and put one hand on the lid, popping the seals with quick cracks and pulling the lid open. What he found inside only confirmed his suspicions. "Medical supplies, long-lasting consumables, leathers, jewellery." He picked up a goblet fashioned of fake silver and examined the engravings. "Late Echidna inscribing, looks to be late 3100s… estimated at around 3190…no sign of the object."

He began to walk amongst the crates, pausing to crack another open or shift aside an emaciated corpse, until he was brought to the centre, which was little more than a carpet of blood and viscera and other body parts, a large steel crate at the centre, the top open. The emerald was vibrating violently now, apparently this was the last place it would be traced to.

Tails peered into the steel container, taking in what he saw then looking away. It was empty. He raised one hand to the comm-link on his ear and made contact.

"Metallix?"

"Master?" came the reply from the other end.

"Do you have my location?"

"Affirmative."

"Lock these coordinates and get a team down here. I want the place cleaned over and everything here to be shipped out to the holding area."

"Confirm?"

"Confirmation, Miles Prower." Tails finished. Metallix would sort out the logistics. He had other things to do. He knew the object wasn't here, so the question was, where was it? Peering around the uninviting chamber, his hopes began to fall; there was not even the remotest suggestion of where to go next.

He summoned a ring again, tossing it and examining the patterns the way he had before. This time, he furrowed his brow and scowled at the ring; he had no idea what it was telling him. Most often the locator ring showed specific patters for various axes, and other patters for various little nuances unique to the user. But it seemed as if the ring was seeking to confuse him. It told him that the object was everywhere and nowhere and other little paradoxes, bringing him no closer to the location of his target now.

Peering around into the flickering light of the ring-fire, he finally settled on another doorway, apparently the only other way out of the pumping station. As he moved towards it, his hand brushed against one of the crates, driving something into his finger. He drew away sharply in the moment of surprise and pain, and examined the finger, pulling something short and green out of it.

"A blade of thistle-grass, generally found in cat country. Perhaps they gave them the object and then, regretting it, returned to take it back? It isn't much, but something to start on I suppose." He moved on again towards the doorway, and through it into the darkness beyond. Above on the rusting gantry, a lone figure watched him go, eyes trained on him through the sophisticated lens of the sniper rifle she had been given to carry this task out with. It was silenced, air-cushioned, each bullet could take the side out of a combot. One shot and, she was sure, he wouldn't be able to block it. But she couldn't bring herself to pull the trigger…despite the orders she had been given, to retrieve the super emerald and eliminate any other seekers as collateral, she couldn't pull the trigger. It didn't feel right; besides, she tried to justify it, wouldn't it be better to trail him, let him wander through it and pick it up after he had gone to the trouble of sorting it out for her? Yes, that would be better.

"I'm going to follow him, see if he can lead me to the prize." She told the earpiece, a rough voice returning.

"Then get on with it. I get bored easily, you know that."

She shuddered at that voice; she hated it, everything about it and the one to whom it belonged, but she had no choice but to follow his command. He would kill her if she didn't. Field stripping the sniper rifle, she set off after Tails.

* * *

Knuckles was finding himself becoming more and more irritated by the gathering of tourists gathering in front of the shrine of the Master Emerald. For them, it was Mobian holiday season; for him, it was a swarm of flies that refused to leave him be. His shouts and rants to clear away seemed to sail over the crowd's heads, and accomplished little more than leaving him breathless, and attracting a few amused faces at the sight of the red guardian Echidna doing the funky chicken for them.

Eventually, Knuckles felt these people had drained him enough, and decided to unhinge himself a little. Cracking his namesakes, he took a few steps forward.

"ALRIGHT THEN!" he bellowed at the crowd, his voice louder and more sonorous than before, and silencing even the rowdiest of the crowd, and all eyes turned to the guardian of the Master Emerald.

"This place is sacred! You defile it with your steps and inhibit my ability to defend it, as is my duty! You wish to stay, then one of you must face me and win!"

Very suddenly it seemed that the crowd were very interested in their shoes, or their hair, or their cameras, or some other menial little object. His words were having the desired effect.

"No challengers? Then leave! None may come further than the bridge unless I will it!"

The Mobian crowd, suitably chastened by the guardian, shuffled away awkwardly, some of the children sprinting across the bridge, some with tears streaming down their faces. Suddenly Knuckles felt pity for some of them. He had made the right choice as was his right and duty, but it still wasn't right to have them come this far just to be halted at the gates. He waited until the crowd had retreated beyond the edge of the bridge, then ten minutes further, then rose from his position at the lower steps and began to make his way out to them, hands open and by his sides, trying his best to look more placid.

He stopped about ten paces from the crowd, a few of the timid or youth shrinking back slightly.

"Now, I want you to listen to something for a moment, alright?" he asked them, keeping his voice level.

A few of the faces in the crowd nodded, and some murmured agreement.

"Alright then, now, I know you took your time getting here, this place isn't exactly the closest to civilisation…" he swept one hand out at the mountains around him, "…so I can understand your frustration of not being allowed to see the item that the Island is most famous for. I've decided on a compromise: I will let the children up to see the emerald, on a few conditions; one, they do not touch the emerald, for their own safety, two, they stay close to me the entire time, and three, they return to the group when I say. They can take pictures if they have cameras, fair enough?"

The teary-eyed faces of the children were suddenly transformed into grins of ecstatic delight, and they began to hop up and down furiously in front of their various parents, begging them to let them go. There was some hurried activity as parents lifted cameras from bags and neck-straps and gave their children crash-courses in handing them, and after a couple of minutes a small pond of children stood in a huddle in front of Knuckles, one in a wheelchair.

"Alright then," he told them on one knee, "follow me, and stay close." He stood up and began walking, keeping a slow, measured pace so they could keep up. Before they were halfway across the bridge he found a small hand tugging at his glove, he looked down to see a girl, an Echidna with pale-pink skin, staring up at him.

"My Knuckles?" her voice was light and half-formed by youth, but she was confident as she stared at him.

"What's wrong?"

"Kestix is getting hurt by the bridge…" she trailed off, pointing to the furry white hedgehog in the wheelchair, "he didn't want to ask 'cause he was worried of getting shouted at…"

"Wait here then." He told the group, before moving out of them and to Kestix, whose wheel had become trapped in a rut on the bridge and he was juggling it furiously with one short arm. He saw Knuckles coming and his face became a mask of fear.

"Don't hurt me don't hurt me it's not my fault!" he whined.

"Hey, hey, now hold on; let's get you out of that hole." The guardian moved round to the side of the chair and looked down – it had just fallen into a hole, but it wouldn't do if that kept on happening, so he took the chair by both hands and lifted it lightly carrying it back to where the other children were waiting.

They had moved a few paces further, enticed by the childhood happiness of going where their parents couldn't, but otherwise hadn't moved. Without putting the chair down, he told them, "come on, let's keep moving!" and the group trundled onwards. As soon as the ground turned from cobbled bridge to softer grass, he lowered the chair to the ground. The child within was grinning like a madman.

"Thanks Mr Knuckles!" he told his saviour, and was able to move with the group as the crossed the grass to the shrine. Once again Knuckles carried him as he came up the steps. Finally on top, he was assailed with questions about little bits of stuff everyone wanted to know. He silenced them with a wave of his hand and selected one at random.

"Why can't we touch it?"

Why couldn't they touch it? Because they would get dirt on it? Because it would upset the balance of the island, possibly causing it to plummet into the sea?

"It will eat you." He told them.

"Will not!" another voice shrieked from the tiny mass.

"It will! It almost happened to me when I was your age." He knew how to deal with kids. Entertain them with fantastical tales and they pretty much obeyed your every command.

Cameras of various shapes and sizes were already going off, taking shots of the shrine, the emerald, a few of him. It didn't matter really, just as long as he was doing his duty, and got these bloody tourists as far away from the emerald as possible…then things would be fine.

It took twenty minutes, asking questions, taking pictures, and Knuckles attempted to continue to smile through the whole ordeal, though by the end his patience was fraying at he was a little hasty in carting the chattering children off back to their parents, but the rabble were so hyped-up on their fun that they barely noticed it, running back to their mothers and fathers – or in some cases wheeling – with smiles on their faces shouting animatedly at them.

Knuckles didn't wait for any thanks – he didn't want them. Instead he returned to his place on the top step of the shrine, to do his duty. It wasn't long until he was interrupted once more.

"Hey Knucklehead! Seen Tails anywhere?" the Echidna glanced up, seeing a blue haze standing over him, silhouetted by the sun. He stood himself and paced a little until it was out of his eyes. Sonic. It would be Sonic, wouldn't it?

Again, for those of you who don't know, Sonic is the four foot five inches blue hedgehog, famous for his superior speed and cocksure attitude towards life.  
"No…" Knuckles began, confused slightly, "why would he come here anyway?"

"Well, we were sitting in the lab, having lunch, and Metallix walks in, tells Tails something I don't hear, and he just ups and walks out, robot in tow. He mentioned something about 'chaos energy' so I thought he might have been here."

"Sorry, can't help, trying to fend off the tourists." Knuckles jabbed one accusing hand at the crowd, now slowly dispersing, from around the bridge.

"They do this every year…" Sonic sympathised, shaking his head. "Ever thought of setting up a toll booth or something, or a theme park? Making a bit of cash?"

"Sonic…"

"It's a joke, lamebrain!" Sonic interrupted his friend's inevitable rant. "Anyway, if Tails hasn't been here then I should probably be going. Want me to stop by sometime?"

"Why not? Gets pretty damn boring up here."

"Well, anyway…see ya!" Sonic laughed, bouncing down the shrine, across the bridge and over the heads of the crowd. Once again Knuckles felt his jealousy of the blue blur rise; he was not free, not whilst he was a guardian.

* * *

Scourge is an irritable hedgehog. Know him? Maybe not, but he's the green Sonic rip-off living on Moebius, the alternate reality to Mobius. Right now he was pacing up and down the centre of a small bedroom, trying to work out what punishment he would mete out to his minion if she didn't bring back the super emerald. So many to choose…but he found himself being drawn back to two possibilities: Death or rape. Why not both? He thought, a grin cracking his face. Maybe he would let her get the emerald, then do it?

Unfortunately, a helot wasn't useful once they became a corpse – unless you wanted to make a cadaver-gun, then corpses suddenly became useful. No…killing her would be a waste of time. She was broken to him as it was; and it gave him something to do on a rainy day. Now that really was a conundrum.

* * *

Banking and applying pressure to the throttle, Tails relished the flight, the speed he could move at even without his own prowess, on his run to Cat Country. He had wasted precious time already; trawling through police reports on smuggling, 'acquiring' detailed maps of smuggler routes from various sources, making sure no-one would notice him missing. Nicole had covered that nicely, all aided by the fact that she now controlled the majority of Knothole's systems and, secretly, most of Mobotropolis.

He had to abandon the Tornado MkII at the border – the plane was legal to fly within the Acorn Kingdom, other areas only in a state of war provided right of passage was attained from the country in question. Besides, it would hamper him. All the smuggler sites were caves or underground caverns, so he would be best suited on his feet.

The figure from before followed him closely, still unable to pull the trigger. She just couldn't. Why couldn't she? He was just another Mobian…wasn't he?...Tails…

The border of Cat Country wasn't patrolled, the province patrolled itself; only the hardiest of warriors lived in Cat Country with someone bordering on ease, so it was in the interest of most just to leave the place well alone.

Tails crossed the border with little difficulty, his assassin trailing behind him with less confidence than he possessed.

The tough grass crackled slightly underfoot as the fox tracked his way through the forests. Ideally he would have travelled on the plains, but the dens of smugglers were predictably located within thicker, harder to navigate areas, so he felt it was his misfortune that he would not spend much time travelling easily. The conversion rings would help, converting substances into foodstuffs, since he didn't bring any of his own. Most food perished easily in Cat country, and the rest was snatched by scavengers, thus other alternatives had to be found.

Going was slow for Tails. Unfortunately he couldn't just go bludgeoning his way through trees, he would attract local trouble, so he had to do things the slow way. He only had maps to work from too; the super emerald had either not visited the place at all or visited it so long ago that no trace of chaos radiation was left. Not for the first time in his life, he was tracking blind.

Ahead, a tocky lumbered through the undergrowth, stopping to sniff. It was searching for food, and would take little interest in Tails. The land tocky rarely did, but Tails took an interest in the tocky. Moving too fast for the slow, lumbering crocodile-like creature to escape, Tails broke its neck and began to scrape off the scales, piling them through a wide ring that he conjured in the process. Small bits of meat fell out the bottom; not cooked, but he had eaten raw before. The conversion ring was a wonderful thing. He finished them in a couple of bites – barely enough to last him the evening. Standing, he walked off into the dusk, tossing the locator ring in one hand, examining the patterns.

* * *

A light tapping at the door sounded into the room, and Sally Acorn looked up from her desk. Sally, princess of the Acorn kingdom, average Mobian height with unassuming brown fur and a red tuft of hair hanging over her face, she didn't look like a princess, especially since she wore little aside from a blue coat and boots.

"Hello?"

"It's me, Sonic."

"Come in then, I'm surprised you didn't anyway."

"Oh come on, I respect your privacy, don't I?" Sonic replied, closing the door behind him, and walking calmly over to the desk.

"Something up?"

"Tails just up and disappeared, no warning. Normally I wouldn't say anything but he's been gone for a while, I haven't seen anything of him yet."

"I'm sure he'll turn up Sonic; I don't see why you are reacting like this, it isn't you."

"Because this time it's something to do with chaos energy. It isn't just Tails disappearing on some sabbatical to get away from it all for a bit, he's actually got something serious going on."

"What?" that got her attention, "and he just leaves without any explanation?"

"Well, me and him, having lunch, Metallix walks in and tells him something – I didn't hear much so don't ask – then Tails gets up and walks out, Metallix in tow. All I heard was Metallix mention 'chaos energy'."

"Who have you seen?"

"Knuckles, and I was going to ask Metallix in a bit."

"No point asking Tails' bolt-boys; if he didn't want you to know about it I doubt him units will, and there's nothing to say against him taking Metallix with him. I'll go after him."

"Why not me?"

"Because if I know Tails, you will only encourage him."


	3. Chapter 2

Sally had her work cut out for her; after all, how do you track a chaos adept that had been missing for nigh on two days without help? Nevertheless, she had little choice. She knew few adepts, and none of them were suitable choices. Sonic would only encourage Tails, Knuckles was busy guarding the Master Emerald, Shadow…well, he was Shadow. However, this did not mean she was completely blind in her search; she knew something of Tails and his methods, the sort of tricks he would employ. Her first stop was the city generator, where a chaos emerald was employed to keep a stealth field over Knothole, where she expected Rotor would be performing maintenance. Rotor, the dependable old Walrus, second to Tails when it came to chaos mechanics. She stopped outside a squat bunker, for you see, most of the generator building was housed underground as protection from artillery or most anti-armour weaponry. The shield was the key defence against prying eyes, both those in Soleanna and in Robotnik's employ; security was tight just to get inside. Fingerprint scans, DNA scans, deadlock passwords…and the defence system to back it up in the event of a break-in. The few overlanders that had ever seen it had dubbed it 'Fort Knox', the impenetrable bunker. Not strictly true; Tails had proven he could best it, and Shadow had infiltrated it once before.

After ten minutes of tiring through the tedious security system (chaos adepts with the correct signature could pass through a lot faster) Sally walked briskly into the control room, eyes scanning the consoles for Rotor or one of his scientists.

She found the latter, a young looking feline in a white lab coat sitting at one of the panels, watching it intently. Sally rolled her eyes; it was clear that it was a trainee, eager to please and a stickler for doing the job with absolute precision and protocol.

"Hello?" Sally called out to the scientist, whose head snapped round, eyes registering panic for a brief second until he realised whom he was hearing. On receiving this revelation, he stood up quickly, brushing down his coat with dark red hands, and briskly marching over to where the princess stood.

"Princess Sally, ma'am, is there something I can help you with?" his voice was clipped, official, but eager as well, and his stance was erect, hands clasped behind his back.

"You don't need to be so formal," she told him, "Too much formality is a waste of time, and I find it too artificial. Save the curried speech for my father, thank you."

"Excuse me, ma'am?"

"I was telling you to relax…" she had not asked his name.

"Lynal, ma'am."

"Well then, Lynal, did they leave you to manage the systems by yourself?"

"N-no, ma'am, I still haven't passed the examinations, Rotor is around here somewhere; I'm just here to watch the screens, he wants to see how I react to problems."

So he was an under-graduate after all; it explained how Rotor was managing to train his employees so well – work experience was the course in itself.

"So where is Rotor now?" she asked the under-grad.

"In the core chamber, ma'am, he said he was going to run a few checks on the emerald chamber himself."

"Thank you, now, return to your studies."

The student nodded eagerly then near-ran back to the console he had been watching, sitting down and returning his gaze to the pale blue screen, numbers scrolling past. Sally didn't spare the screen a second glance; the numbers it displayed meant next to nothing without plenty of guidance, instead she moved on, past the banks of consoles in the control room, and through the great open blast door that led to the emerald chamber.

Tails had been convinced that the blast door would be of little comfort to those inside in the event of a chaos cataclysm, as he called it, and Sally still recalled the argument he had fought through with the other Knothole technicians, trying to get it annulled and have the materials used somewhere else. In the end, it had been the only argument he had lost, the weight of numbers pressing against him.

So the thick, inner shield wall had remained, and within this still-wide chamber rested the chaos emerald, nestled within thick bundles of cables and machinery, all to channel and regulate the energy flow, or so Sally had been told. It wasn't for her to know, how it all worked; Tails took care of that.  
She spotted Rotor, amidst the cables, leaning out over a gantry above to inspect some machinery up close. That was just like him, not trusting completely the data the machines gave him, he preferred his own eye from time to time. For the most part, Sally trusted him more; he was as fast as any computer, if not Tails, and generally gave a straight answer as opposed to having to interpret it from the screen.

"Hey, you alive up there?" she called up the circular chamber to Rotor.

"Oh! Oh, Sally! I didn't hear you come in! Give me a moment to extricate myself…" the walrus leaned back from the perch, and began to make his slow progress down the gantries and walkways around the emerald unit.

"Now tell me, to what do I owe this visit?" he asked on reaching the bottom, accompanying the question with a mock-bow.

"Tails went missing, chasing something important, and we need to find him before he does anything wrong."

Rotor's smile at seeing Sally again changed to a frown, and he began shaking his head, muttering under his breath.

"What? Do you know where he is?" Rotor heard the question, but did not know how to answer.

"I…that is to say…I can't…" he blustered for several seconds before giving up.

"You know where he is, don't you? Please, we need to find him. I'm worried he is getting himself into something he can't handle."

"He's not a child, Sally, he is able to look after himself you know…but in this case, I must agree with you. I may know where he is, but this is naught but an educated guess." His voice was a warning in itself.

"Tell me."

"Well, as you know, from here we monitor chaos energies and signatures across Mobius, trying to locate and identify possible sources of power. Recently- very recently, we found one."

"But we have all the chaos emeralds, don't we?"

"It isn't, or wasn't, a chaos emerald. We found a place in Mobotropolis that was giving of substantial readings of chaos radiation, but there was no clear source, so we believed it was just the leftover from a more powerful source. It has happened before; thank the source that chaos radiation is harmless. Anyway, we ran it through a series of calculations we use to calculate the strength of the original source, and…" Rotor's voice dropped to a whisper, "…it was exactly seven times the strength of the chaos emerald, if we were correct. If Tails is missing, he has probably pinpointed the first location."

"Crap." Sally swore vehemently, "Where was the first location?"

"A warehouse district…North Block B-14- you aren't thinking of going after him?" Rotor asked, incredulous.

"He may be able to take care of himself, but old habits die hard." She was not just referring to herself.

**Sixty years ago, location unknown… **

_"Jericho and Wesker maybe, but Temris…" Syna whispered to her only remaining companion as they waited for the Mobian patrol to pass by their concealed location._

_Melor hissed in irritation, "they were…disssposssable…Mussst I remind you to quell your feelingsss towards Temrisss…?"_

_"I- I keep hearing his voice, in my head, this infernal tapping, his constant, unrelenting whisper…I can't take it!" she snapped loudly, Melor recoiling in fear of detection. Then his eyes flickered to the super emerald, secure in her belt, then down to his chest, where a small red mark appeared._

_"Ssshit." Was all he could mutter before the gun barked, the patrolling Mobian silencing him as the rest of the team moved in to take down any other hostiles. When they parted the undergrowth, the snake was the only one._

_"Was he the only one?" the one who had fired the gun asked._

_"We won't know now, I told you, non-lethal takedown shots only. If there was another, we won't find them now."_

**Present Day… **

Muttering to himself about the lack of wildlife – for his last meal had been less than adequate – Tails pushed his way through the trees and undergrowth, bits of fauna and twigs catching in his fur. "Why do these dens have to be so secluded? Why not go for somewhere more…accessible? These smugglers must have been hawking entire tankers of special goods…" it was a light jest, but serious in its own way. To escape detection, smugglers of old had gone through stringent procedures to get their wares into the city – though no more than they could sell for, of course. Newer methods had put most modern smugglers out of commission, though there was still a market for extremely rare items, such as jewels from the Echidna temples, or eyestones of cat-mark golems. The market was negligible really, not just because of the Mobian authorities, but because the artefacts were often hunted with religious zeal when stolen, the occupants often wanting them back and more often than not, taking the thief back with them as an appeasement to the gods.

Tails himself was in possession of one particular item, The Bloodied Fang, an item that the Echidna had somehow managed to imbue with chaos energy. Unfortunately, unlike chaos emeralds, which were naturally calibrated to release chaos energy with a specific command, the Fang released energy on contact with another living being, regardless of their ability with chaos energy. In short any who touched it exploded like a fleshy balloon. Chaos adepts could control the energy, keep it within the item, and Tails kept it confidentially until he could expel the chaos energy from it and sever the link, or find a way to master it for standard use.

Irrespective, that was not the problem for now; what mattered at the present time was finding the den, so he may extract some sort of useful information as to where to go next.

His emerald began to vibrate, warning that the super emerald had been here before. It started small, like a plucked guitar string, yet growing with each step as his feet stamped through the moist undergrowth. Tails flicked out the locator ring, tossing it in an attempt to read the patterns, but each spin only pointed him to a small copse of trees, rising out the side of a cliff face. Wait, cliff face? Had that always been- of course it had! He had wandered into a ravine with his search, not seeing it from the ground, the wall of rock had risen up either side of him without him noticing a thing!

But the trees…did they hid the entrance? It may have been possible, through a rope ladder or early hovercraft, and it certainly seemed out of the way. Perhaps…

He launched into the air, Tails spinning as they took his weight like a min-helicopter, powering him forward and up to the small wall of trees. As he came close, his hands reached out, scrabbling for purchase, but the ancient sodden wood came away in shows of mossy, wet splinters, refusing him even the slightest of handholds. Pulling away slightly, Tails tugged off his gloves, exposing the sharpened Mobian claws, and tried again. The knife-like edges dug into the wood, searching past the rotten exterior to the stronger, sturdier grips, and he hung there, trying to peer past the trunks to the inside. It may have been his imagination, but he believed that past the line of oak he clung to so precariously, he could see an opening, barely. His hands were occupied, keeping him anchored, but he still had his namesakes. Striking again and again, he hammered into the trunks that rested beside his own, tearing away rotten bark in clouds of sawdust, and then more solid interior, larger lumps falling away, until at last, after tearing at the surprisingly resilient trunks, they gave way. Like some bizarre parody of a dying giant the two massive, ancient trunks came away from the mountainside with long, sighing creaks, tumbling towards the ravine below. Tails watched them go, and as they hit the ground, he thought he saw _someone_ dart out of the way, a flash of something, but perhaps it was just dirt or vegetation thrown up by the impact. He could not be sure; at a range this great – about one hundred feet – it was not easy to sense a person's location, thanks to the minor earthquake the trees managed to cause in the ravine. For a moment, Tails found himself clinging onto the trunk as flocks of surprised birds shot past, until things had finally settled once more, and he swung himself round to a small, rocky outcrop the trees had concealed.

Sure enough, the trees had concealed an entrance, whether by luck or by design, and it had been abandoned long ago, if indeed it had ever been used at all. The vines that had grown across the entrance were testimony…but now they were plastered to the side, torn away by something trying to get in. Someone had been here, and recently. Perhaps they still waited within. His ears pricked, straining to pick up any sound or sign of life, to glean some help on what may be inside, but somehow, the only thing that came back was...emptiness. It was disconcerting, normally even caves had life resonations from the bacteria or fungi, but this one seemed akin to a pit, swallowing up his senses. He had to hope it was merely a side-effect of wrongly-regulated chaos radiation, and took his first steps into the darkness.

They wouldn't let her in! The princess of the damned kingdom and they wouldn't let her through over some red tape! The MUCSI had been allowed to cordon off a warehouse in B-14, for reasons that were not being explained. Not much was being explained in fact; most of the investigators refused to even meet her stern gaze, let alone reply to her.

She refused to lose her cool, standing at the edge of the barricade with a look of impatience on her face, tapping one foot and arms folded. Since almost everyone would know who she was, eventually someone useful would show up.

"Miss Sally?" in response to finally being addressed, Sally thought she may have reacted a little too aggressively.

"Finally! Will someone please care to tell me why I cannot even come and go in my own city?!"

"Excuse me…but we didn't want to get more prints than there already are…we are trying to finish yet another unsolved case. I'm sure my men meant no disrespect, but we were told to keep the details of the case entirely confidential." The speaker was a panther, his nametag identifying him as Office Brumlin, acting-chief of the MUCSI.

"And exactly WHO has the authority to keep it from me?" Sally believed she may already know, but had to be sure. Brumlin hesitated, apparently caught between loyalties; it was time to step up a notch. "May I remind you," Sally added, her tone authoritarian, "that disobeying one of the Acorn family is treason?"

"I- I'm sorry, ma'am, it was Mr Prower."

"Tails…damn! Was he here?"

"Y-yes, ma'am, but he didn't say-"

The nervous panther was interrupted by a beeping in Sally's ear, her communicator signalling an incoming call. She silenced Brumlin with one hand, activating the earpiece with the other.

"Hello?" she asked down the line.

"Sally? It's me, Tails."

"Tails- where are you? What are you doing-"

"I don't have the luxury of talking about it in detail, and would you stop shouting? Listen, how fast can you get to Violet Ravine?"

"Violet Ravine…that's in Cat Country! Why on earth do you need me there?" Sally's voice was incredulous.

"I can't explain now, I don't have time, but please, get over here as fast as you can." He sounded urgent, agitated, but he cut off before she could think to reply, leaving her back in the city once more.

"Is something wrong?" Brumlin put in, only having heard one half of the conversation. She shook his head at him sadly.

"I'm sorry I had to disturb you, Officer, carry on with the investigation. I know what I want to know."

He hoped Sally would heed his plea; she needed to see what he had found. He couldn't try again and risk discovery-the EMP ring he had hurriedly formed and tossed into the signal jamming station would have deactivated by now, and they would detect him if he tried again. It wasn't a scenario he particularly wanted. Legions, battalions of every type of combat robot available were assembled in the massive underground chamber, tended to by scores of construction spiders, ready to activate as many as were needed in a moment's notice. Even a few newer types, models Tails had not seen before, stood in ordered lines, the quad of command units each topped with a flying standard, faced with the visage of a mad dictator.

If he hadn't set himself upon this search, Ivo Robotnik would have continued this preparation in relative comfort. The dictator himself was nowhere to be seen, though it was possible that he was perusing the ranks of his metal legions, or that he had sent his pitiful excuse for a nephew, Snively, to oversee the work. Robotnik was vaguely interesting to fight, and at points, when he was not trying to take over all of Mobius, Tails had sort of admired the technology he produced, some time ago. Snively, on the other hand, was nothing of his uncle, only good enough to give and follow orders if the old madman was feeling tired or lenient, often the former.

The rough scraping of metal on stone warned him of the approach of one of the spider drones, and he shifted his position slightly, trying to hide himself behind a wedge of stone jutting out from the cavern wall. The machine capered by, a cylinder held aloft by nine spindly legs, adorned with rows of tools for various construction and deconstruction purposes. It was moving along the wall, scouring any protrusions with cutting torches and grinding tools, and it was slowly, inextricably making its way towards Tails. Now he had to decide what to do; when it spotted him it would send out a distress signal, but it was going to interesting manoeuvring past it without that happening. He opened his senses, searching with every way he could for a suitable way out. It was one of his old mentor, Tempest's, methods: hit with everything or not at all. His ears picked up a barely audible _-click-_ from somewhere, and then the spider's optics crumpled, apparently without reason. Then, a moment later, something inside exploded almost soundlessly and the spider itself fell, tools spinning to a halt and legs curling up under it. Tails waited in place, but there was no whirring of activation, no stomp of robot guards converging on his location, so he assumed that whatever had happened, it had just granted him a small mercy.

Edging from his hiding space, he crept silently past the construction bot, but something made him pause. He turned to the carapace, crouching beside it and tentatively peeling away the damaged protection, wary of failsafes or alarms.

He found something that he wasn't expecting; a spent bullet. Easily twice the length of his index finger, a two-stage bullet. The first was a point, designed to crack through armour – or a skull – Tails mused grimly, whilst the second stage delivered a small but highly explosive charge to the interior of whatever the target was. The design meant it could only be fired from a long-barrelled weapon, sniper rifles mostly…that gave him cause to think.

Taking the spent bullet with him, Tails moved swiftly from the cavern, towards one of the unfinished exit ports being assembled for the robot army.  
Something else caught his eye, a section of wall, as it flickered slightly right before him as he crept past it. He couldn't risk a locator ring, so he placed his hands flat against the wall, and to his expectations, they fell right through. He pushed through the rest of the way, and he found himself in a small antechamber, collecting dust. Stapled to the wall either side of him were large clunky objects, primitive holographic projectors, he guessed, by the nature of the wall.

As for the room itself, it was piled high with crates not dissimilar to the ones from the previous hideout, but those were not the objects of his attention. He was drawn to a desk, stacked with various letters of transactions. Tails stepped towards it, and began to rifle through the papers, skim-reading the titles and dates until he paused, the writing reading:

_Red gemstone, estimated value: one-hundred-and-twenty gold ingots-_

Tails shook his head sadly, knowing that it was worth far in excess even of pure gold brick-sized ingots. He read further on:

_Item is of unknown origin, and displays peculiar qualities, including an inner light that seems to shine regardless of the tests performed. Was transferred in from Ice Paradise. One man exploded when handling it, joking with it. After the incident, the item was sealed in a steel container to prevent further accidents. Item to be transferred to zone in Mobotropolis, further instructions to be received there._

There was more, but it was irrelevant. He knew what he needed to know, he knew his next destination.

Unfortunately, he could not set off just yet, for he had to wait for Sally's arrival to warn her of what was going on here. Pushing his way out through the false wall, he turned left, moving again towards the unfinished access point.

As he reached it and the evening sun fell across his muzzle and then the rest of him, he was struck by a strange melancholy, and sense of familiarity, before he returned to himself.

Jumping, he reached up to the roof, and his claws fastened themselves to it, finding their holds in crevices and cracks. From there he vaulted up out of the chamber, onto a natural awning that overlooked the valley he had entered by.

He sat down to wait and watch for Sally, and to think.

* * *

**A/N: I feel obligated to point out that if you see an error that I missed, please don't just hate the story because I failed to see it. Spellcheck has on occassion allowed a word through when I made a mistake, and it has been so minor an error that I have not seen it, even when reading it again. If you _do _encounter such an error, I apologise in advance, and hope it does not detract from your experience. I say this in sarcasm; if such a minor error has been under the stern gaze of your nit-picking, please just read the story. While I do value spelling and grammar, an accidental mistake is art of all of us an human nature, and to allow a minor mistake to lower your general opinion of the story then it seems you do not read for the pleasure, and that is why I write.**

**Yes, I write because I want people to enjoy reading my work as much as I enjoy reading it. I don't write just so people can rip it apart and point out every flaw, misconception and spelling error that there is. While I accept constructive critiques, I do not accept the complete degradation of my work purely for the sake of such an endeavor. If you only read this to critique it, then it is a waste of time - I write for the enjoyment of both myself and the reader.  
**


	4. Chapter 3

As night set in, Tails' keen eyes surveyed the lay of the land, the rise as the Violet Ravine joined the rest of Cat Country, the border lights of the Acorn Kingdom, the smoke and lights of a few of the more tribal areas. At least it was tranquil, he reflected, it was a night for thinking, a night for understanding.

His gloveless hands plucked a pebble from a niche, holding it in his claws, surprisingly delicately; he examined the surface of it, then flicked it off the outcrop, watching it spin towards the ground. He knew that the laws of physics made it impossible, but he wished for once, the stone may fall upwards, just for something new to happen. It looked like something new might be happening for once, this hunt for the super emerald.

Something moved in the forest below, edging into his chaos-vision, which he had used to scry the landscape, waiting for Sally's approach. It looked like her, even from this far away; it moved like she did, and he had been around her so long it just felt as if it was her, she may be a non-adept, but she gave off her own distinctive aura, he had yet to discern why. It didn't matter at this point; all that was important was that she was here.

Silently he swan-dived from his perch, only beginning to spin his tails when the ground was less than ten feet away. It cushioned his landing but did not alert anyone to his action, his hands sinking into the loamy soil as he landed. He relished the feel for a moment, then stood and moved off towards the aura, glowing through the trees in his mind's eye.

Even so sure within his own mind, he took time approaching, lest it be some elaborate trick or if he was just plain wrong. Each step he took was placed as so to make as little noise as possible, carefully stepping over rocks or fallen timber on his route.

Finally, only a few feet from the one he believed to be Sally, he paused, concealing himself behind the thickest trunk he could find, namesakes curling swiftly up around him.

Then Tails peered out, one eye revealing itself round the pillar of wood, searching ahead.

He expelled the breath he had been holding in, and finally stepped out from his hiding place, and Sally's eyes widened in relief to see him there, to see him still alive.

"Tails…what are you doing?" her voice was low, prudent, considering her lack of knowledge of the surrounding landscape.

Tails was surer, and felt no such qualms about the volume of his voice, though he thought to keep it low, lest they be found by the legion in the caves.

"I don't think it matters what I'm doing at this point, Sally, what matters is what you are going to be doing."

"You're giving me orders?" Sally asked, with more than a touch of irritation, and so the answer surprised her.

"No, I'm saving Knothole."

"From what?" she asked him, but received no reply. He led her to the cliff face, and, with her holding onto his legs, scaled it, chaos-hardened claws biting into the stone as he hauled himself up. Sally weighed barely anything – a virtue of both her slim form and his musculature, and thus the journey was mercifully easy and quick. When at last they edged onto the spit of rock Tails had used as an outlook, he briefed the Princess on what was going on.

"None of us saw this coming, nothing on our scanners can reach this far, except maybe save the Typhoon…" he began.

"What? What did we not see?"

"Below us is a cave, within is an army. Our old friend, Dr Robotnik, is preparing an army, legions of combat robots, and considering there is no other reason for them to be here, I expect their next destination is the Acorn Kingdom."

"Are you sure? Maybe they're here to subjugate Cat Country?"

"You're clutching at straws, my princess. Think about it, individually, Cat Country as a province poses no threat to Robotnik or his empire – he knows the logic behind it as well as I do. Even then, if he were to try and capture this particular land, he would have to waste resources controlling the unmarked borders, an impossible task with his current resources. No, he will attack the Acorn Kingdom, for the metal we have, for the potential workforce, and to ensure that provinces such as Cat Country would have no-one to join with if they decided to go to war."

"Then we should-"

"Wait, you misunderstand me. As you have already pointed out, I have my own agenda. I have to complete my own line of work, then I can return to assist you. I don't think you need me for this, you have all you need, and…" he brushed the communicator on Sally's ear with one claw, "…and you have Nicole."

* * *

Sally vaulted into the cave, landing on 'cat's feet' as she darted to the edge of the wall. Cling to the shadows, she had always taught, now it was time to put her own words to the test. The legions were there alright; ranks upon ranks of metal glinting in the half-light of the cave, lit only by the outside, the worker drones used their own night vision to go about their duties. She was running blind once more. She had natural night vision, yes, but it was not as acute as other Mobian species, ones that were more meant for hunting. Inch by inch she moved herself along the stone wall – strangely smooth – eyes hunting for something that looked like a control room.

The task was easier said than done; several constructions were either stapled to the walls or hung from the ceiling by thick black cables, solid walkways connecting them above the heads of the metal legions.

"Nicole?" Sally ventured into her earpiece.

"Yes, Sally?" the voice that came back was pleasant enough, despite being an artificial being.

"Can you see this?"

"Not as you would, no, but I am using your oculus to construct a map."

Sally's oculus, or scouter, was a little red dot fixed just above her right eyebrow, and, using a link to her retina, gave her something near to a heads-up-display. It was one of the few things that she had allowed Tails to give her, providing it was removable, and it was. The retinal link was withdrawn if a certain command string was spoken, then the device would extract itself from her brow, leaving no mark behind thanks to its peculiar method of attachment.

"Is there any sign of a control room?"

"Well, the energy signatures I am receiving from the objects on the ceiling are giving out exorbitant amounts of energy, so I expect those to be little more than generators. The constructions bolted to the sides of the cavern-"

"Hold up, Nicole, never mind. I know where I need to go for this."

There could be no mistake; the giant dome set into the side the cavern, bedecked with Robotnik's visage, was the only one the good doctor would use as his command post. Anything less extravagant would be out of the question.

How coincidental, then, that the giant red and yellow building sat at the back of the legions, centred dead in the middle. It would be murder getting to it…Sally's eyes moved skyward, to the generator silos – or, more specifically, the pipes and walkways between them – and a plan began to form.

"Nicole, is it possible to deactivate the generator lights from here?"

"Not for me, not through this medium. The processing speed would have to be significantly greater to-"

"I get it."

She would have to scale the walls; a nigh on impossible task, since the labouring of the constructions spiders had sliced and grinded until it was smooth, no handholds, no way up. She had one way…but she needed some noise.

"Nicole, what can you do in the way of making me some noise, and light?"

"Hmmm…it will only work for a few seconds, but I should be able to overcharge the lights and set off a few klaxons while I'm at it." Any normal person would have asked what Sally intended to do, but Nicole was an AI, and she already had several ideas about what Sally was thinking.

"Three, two, one!" Sally heard, and as the words faded, she snapped her fingers. The lights flared up and klaxons wailed, but both were drowned out by the thunderbolt and lightning flash that coincided with the summoning of the Spear of Rhadamanthus. A spear, four feet in length and encased in bronze and a planetary constellation running the length of the blade, it was a weapon formerly wielded only by demigods, a gift to Sally from Tails.

The summoning was a ring effect, one specially crafted for her for this use.

Taking one look at the tip of the spear, she pointed it towards the generators – or, more specifically, the cables that held them – and whispered the words of power she had been taught, the methods Tails had embedded into the spirit of the blade. Lightning flash from the point, cutting the darkness and then the cables, tearing the generator pod free from its mountings and letting it drop like a stone into the massed ranks of robotic minions below.

The detonation was loud, and the resulting shockwave threw Sally against the cavern wall, pain lancing through her back from the shock of impact. It had dealt significant damage to one of the legions, and for a moment her mind wondered what would happen if she were to trigger the rest…but that was not her aim. She knew that the sound of the spear appearing would no doubt have been heard above the siren sounds, which were now ringing justly, sending out peals of noise warning the few organics of one of the generators failing, so Sally had brought down a generator to make a louder sound.

Using the spear like a climbing pick, she scaled the sheer wall of the cavern, digging her claws into each nook she dug with the spear, until she was level with the walkways connecting the generators. Finally she was able to reach out and snatch at the metal gantry, and pull herself up onto it.

Thankfully it was empty, only put there out of the possible chance that one day it might need servicing, provided things lasted long enough. Sally expelled a held breath; a spear is an unwieldy weapon when you have very little room to move, and the thin walkway was exactly that. With one had she dug the spear from the wall, the other digging into a steel plate of the generator, not quite flush with the rest of it, to keep balance. Once the spear was retrieved, she began her slow, precarious way along the raised paths.

To her relief, the generator she had felled was not at a key point, or her path would have ended in a slope of metal then a drop into a pile of scrap metal and slowly cooling plasma. No, there was another generator and another path leading over the legions, and so Sally was free to move forward, towards Robotnik, towards…

* * *

Tails watched Sally enter the cave, hoping he had made the right choice, lying to her. Yes, it was true that Robotnik was assembling this army for a reason, but he doubted it would be to attack Knothole or the Acorn Kingdom.

It was no coincidence that the mad dictator had set up in the same cave that had once been a haven to smugglers; he had probably stumbled across the hideout, seen the description of the super emerald, and set his sights on it. If he had any sense, he would have sent squads forward to Ice Paradise – and Tails could not afford to have the rest of the legions tagging along behind him, nor could he afford to bring Sally along.

No, Sally agreeing to this little excursion was merely ensuring his task would remain his own and that Robotnik – or Sally – would get in his way. Hoping once again that he had made the right choice, he vaulted from the outlook and dropped to the forest floor. He landed as easily as before, silently, and rose to walk away. He had not gone ten steps before a thunderbolt sounded from the cave, then a few moments later, another, louder noise.

He kept walking, though now he had cause to smile; Sally would be fine. He held up the paper with the details of the emerald transportation on, _Ice Paradise_, and shook his head. This paper trail would have to lead somewhere, and he was following it backwards. What was he hoping to do?

Discover some information to its whereabouts from the source? No, it felt more like it was the right thing to do, the kind of dangerous illogic that had some flavour of truth, that sort of mad idea that just might work. In the absence of everything else, Tails was happy enough to fall back on it. It was that or running around like a headless chicken, and he knew which he preferred.

Using his comm-link, he contacted Metallix, "Get me information on the Ice Paradise region; bandit and smuggler haunts, or any smuggling activity around sixty years ago."

"Confirmed."

"Send the data to me on route, I can't wait around."

Tails expected the link to cut off, but another voice was busy listening in on the conversation.

"What are you after Tails?" it was Nicole, another problem, and a far harder one to turn aside.

"That's no concern of yours."

"If it has the potential to threaten the kingdom or Mobius, it is my concern, or have you forgotten why you reactivated me?"

"Nicole…"

"I may be an AI, Tails, but don't try and worm your way around me this time. You can beat me at chess, but when it comes to notions of trust and honour, you seem to be bereft of any skill."

"I'm…"

"Tails, you're hiding something, and when you do that, I know it may be a danger to everyone. Tell me, or I will be forced to seize your assets and send a team after you for the sake of national security."

For once, Tails felt he had been cornered by his own want to continue incognito. There were a couple of ways out of this, none of them desirable, but he had to choose one. Remaining silent would only prove his guilt.

"If I tell you, by accordance to the master doctrine, you will be under command not to disclose the information to anyone else, Nicole. Remember that."

"What are you after, Tails?"

He sighed at her persistence. "I'm chasing Scourge." He lied smoothly. "Ice cap zone."

"This is why you should tell people, the important people. But, I have to ask, why the sudden interest?"

"I got wind of his activities through Metallix, decided to go tracking him. I couldn't tell Sonic or take him along, he's too much of a loose cannon, and I couldn't tell anyone else without Sonic getting wind of it some way or another."

"Logical, and I noticed you didn't tell Sally what you were doing either."

"Robotnik was preparing for the attack on Knothole, like I said. It would have been folly to let him continue without letting anyone know, and Sally seemed a good choice, being level headed and smart." Tails lied as he would tell the truth, letting nothing by.

"I understand, then. Well, is there anything I can do?"

"I can handle this by myself, thanks. I haven't had a chance to test myself of late, so just try to keep the others off my back." Tails finished in his best authoritative tone, and once he was sure Nicole had gone, he flicked the comm-badge from his ear and crushed it under one boot.

It meant he was effectively alone, he couldn't call in his own legions, but Nicole was a threat to his anonymity, and he could not ignore it. Perhaps it would be that addressing one problem had created others, but he had done it now and it no longer mattered if another choice could have been made. He continued on his way, not looking back.

About half a minute later, the little communicator was trampled further by the shadow that followed Tails, but they still had their choice to make, they still could change this future.

* * *

Using the generator paths had been a success in the majority, but the pathways only joined the generators themselves together. The only links they had to the rest of the constructs were through a series of black cables bolted to the ceiling by thick steel brackets. Sally could not use them, not if she wanted to hold on to the spear. It was a powerful weapon, but she did not have any way of sheathing it, so had to hold it one-handed. The walls this far up were also sheer, and Sally did not feel her arms were up to the task of climbing along them one handed with the spear. Once again, she found herself with little way to continue. While she mulled this over, she decided to cause a little more mayhem. Taking the spear by the cap at the end, she jabbed out at the closest bracket, and then the next, slicing through the solid metal with the diamond-like tip, courtesy of Rhadamanthus.

Now the brackets had a little free-swing, and with this, Sally sliced through the cables themselves, above her head, and let them swing down.

The cavern went dark as the lights, until now happily powered by generators, cut out. In automatic response, a dozen repair drones took to the air, unfurling an array of tools to fix the damaged cabling. Sally, knowing the full capability of these repair-units, watched them work around her without concern, as they strung cables back into place, soldered and fused wire and rubber, then welded the brackets back together.

The moment they finished their task, they began to return to their perch above one of the smaller constructions on the cavern wall. Sally saw her chance and jumped, sailing through the air and clamping both arms around the circular body of the drone. The black orb beeped fretfully as its engines tried to compensate for the extra weight. Sally clung on for dear life and hoped grimly that it could cope with the extra weight. The high pitched whining didn't sound too good, and, just shy of the holding pen, the little ionisation jet flared out and died, dropping like a stone towards the floor.

Sally, for a moment, was weightless, and she released her grip and struck out with the spear, digging into the steel construction on the cavern wall and scoring a jagged rent down the side as she tried to halt herself.

For Sally, it felt like her arm was about to be ripped from the socket. Her thrust into the construct had been awkward, one-handed, and the jerking sensation that ripped through her arm as the blade had entered metal struck every nerve in her arms and caused her to cry out in pain – fortunate, then, that the construction spiders and maintenance drones were not programmed to respond to that sort of sound, or she may have found the robotic legions breathing down her neck.

As her descent ground to a painful stop, Sally swung her other arm round to latch on to the protruding spear shaft. It didn't do much to lessen the pain in her right arm, but it was something and it gave her a stronger grip on her lifeline.

Looking around with her significantly limited vision, it seemed there was not much of a choice of places to go; it consisted mostly of down, the floor of the cavern several yards beyond the lethal fall point even for Mobians.

She turned her eyes to the surface of the unassuming construct, inspecting the plates welded onto it carefully. A little above her perch were a few external pipes, pumping Aurora-knows-what into the facility, but knowing Robotnik, she thought, it could be literally anything.

Sally began to swing, like a gymnast, on the pole of the spear, using it like a trapeze artist's swing, and, when she was vertical from the start of a swing, she released. Up, towards the pipes with a painful arm, she reached out and clutched at the smooth metalwork, hands fastening around the pipes.

She glanced down – she had left the spear behind – an unfortunate loss of luggage that was trade for her to continue. To lose it so early! She would retrieve it on her way out, or get Tails or Sonic to get it for her…for now, onward.

Hand over hand she scaled the pipes, slipping frequently thanks to both her damaged arm and the slickness of the pipes themselves; for ten minutes she climbed, each rough and each not promising a sequel, until she was able to haul herself onto the top of the storage tank, a few metres from the main dome. Her she waited, until the pain in her arm had lessened to a degree and she felt able to continue.

Then, standing a few steps from the edge, she ran, sprinted off the edge, leaping towards one of the ventilator shafts not yet in use, and gripped the rim of the tunnel. Pulling herself up into it, she saw it ran down at a shallow angle, with no indication of where it came out. If she got this wrong, she realised, she could end up being diced by a giant fan somewhere along the way.

She crawled inside, aware of what could go wrong, but moving on nonetheless. She failed to see the tiny drone that appeared behind her, and retrieved the spear of Rhadamanthus from the wall, disappearing into the dome one its task was complete, spear and all.

* * *

**Sixty Years ago, north-west of Ice Paradise**

_Syna felt the air grow colder around her, as she moved towards the peak, where the emerald was telling her to go. Its actions had no rhyme or rhythm, but she followed anyway. It was not as if she could do anything else; she was on the run from almost every Mobian authority there was, the others were dead…her only vague hope of…anything…was to escape to angel island. The Echidna mostly didn't care what sort of convict you were, as long as you didn't do it again there._

_The emerald had other ideas, however. It seemed to be waiting, procrastinating. Could a gem have feelings? She had never thought one could, but she hadn't thought a gem could sing until now, but it seemed to be whispering to her almost constantly, and her sleep was plagued with incomprehensible dreams._

_Things could only get worse from here, as her sanity frayed._


	5. Chapter 4

Tails' fur bristled as a fresh sheet of wind and sleet battered him. The climb was arduous, with little shelter and no warmth, Tails was using light-rings to keep himself warm. His claws sliced into snow and ice, serving as makeshift grappling hooks and climbing tools. This was autumn, and at this time of year the Ice Cap Zone was far from perfect, and he was still some distance from Ice Paradise, the area used as a ski and snowboard resort. He was half-concerned about his shadow, how they would fare on this mountainside. Had they brought food, water and shelter, or sufficient rings to do otherwise? He couldn't tell.

A boulder, six times his height and width covered in frost and ice, loomed out of the snowstorm, on a ridge ahead. Flicking out two ring bombs, he tossed them with practised accuracy towards the middle of the rock. Each one sunk in a few inches, then exploded with loud thumps, blowing out chunks of ice into the air around him. Powering forward against the wind, he moved the last few feet into his makeshift cover. It was just as cold inside, but at least it offered a respite against the driving rain. To himself he whispered: "ring shield, ten rings." And the protective shield flared up around him, cutting off the cold and replacing it with a pleasant thirty-four degrees. Ten rings gave him about five minutes of warmth, he guessed, but enough. After that…another ten kilometres to Ice Paradise, something of a respite from the potentially lethal conditions he was feeling here.  
He shut his eyes, attempting to nap, to catch some minor respite for the trek ahead.

* * *

Sally dropped from the inside of the venting shaft onto a bridge of piping that ran away into the darkness. She was in a service passage – the walls, floor and ceiling all made from the pipes, each as thick as her forearm, tightly packed against each other. There was no lighting, nothing either way, so, using her own night vision, Sally moved along the path, wary of trap or…or anything. She was less armed than she had liked. Maybe she would have brought a pistol with her, silencer, HEAT rounds, but she hadn't counted on using or losing the spear so soon. She hadn't counted on being thrown into a combat situation at all, really.

Finally the maintenance corridor terminated in the end of the venting system, and another grate that opened onto another corridor, designed more for normal access than the cramped vent-shaft. A solid kick saw the grate ripped from its bolting and clatter onto the floor, and as Sally dropped from the hatch, a pair of Type-30 robots, having heard the noise, appeared round the corner. Combat reflexes saved her, and their weapons were still coming up as she somersaulted over them, lashing out with punches and kicks to vulnerable rear sections, and the first dropped as a foot slammed into a processor, mangling the programming. The other was mid-turn when a solid strike shattered the piston in its knee, and it keeled over, the semi-automatic slug weapon churning off rounds erratically, and another kick to the head shut it off completely.

Normally she wouldn't have been able to shut down robots that easily, what with not being a chaos adept and all, but Type-30s were defunct. Mostly Robotnik just used them for maintenance and they barely received the leisure of it themselves – they were next to useless in a fight.

"I was going to ask you to hold on to one of those- I could have used it. Next time you come across one, try and snag it undamaged, alright?" Nicole chirped thoughtfully.

"Alright, alright, but it isn't easy when they're all trying to kill you."

She had to find an armoury – Robotnik still kept a small garrison of Robians, but because they were meant for non-combatant roles he generally didn't install weapons in them, preferring to spend more of that sort of resource on upgrading his more combat-oriented models. Robians, in times of war, were given rifles to fight with. If sally could get her hands on one of those, she might find herself less defenceless against the stronger types of combot.

A pity, then, that Sally was in Robotnik's base. The signs were written in Overlander, or machine-code, both languages that Sally was not over-familiar with. She knew Tails could read machine-code, at least in some capacity, but Sally very rarely saw Overlander writing, having very little to do in running the kingdom. As far as she knew, even her father didn't know much of the language – he had people who translated it to transform it into the Mobian language.

Now she cursed, and wished she had taken the initiative to learn at least the basics of the language. She was following corridors, choosing paths at random when she came to them, hoping that she was still moving towards the centre of the structure, where out of habit Robotnik would have no doubt placed his command centre. Twice she had to double back on herself, as patrolling teams of Combots or construction spiders clanked past, and each time her progress was slowed. After an eternity, it seemed, her pathways led to a giant door that irised open at her approach, hissing loudly. The sight that greeted her – she was unprepared, to say the least. Dozens of columns, little twists of light in an amphitheatre suspended above a pit, disappearing into the darkness above and below. They were placed without an obvious pattern, but all stopped before a circle in the middle, where….where something waited. A pedestal, it seemed, made of black granite and training wires and bits of glinting metals, Sally could not fathom what was meant to fit there. It didn't look like the usual slot for a chaos emerald – six spikes fanned out from the centre, spinning slowly.

"So, princess, what do you think of my latest work?" Sally spun around at the voice, searching for the source, then stopped. Speakers. Robotnik had an extreme sense of self-worth, but he wasn't foolhardy enough to personally reveal himself to anyone, including a Mobian that had extensive hand to hand combat training.

Sally wasn't giving him anything – she stayed silent.

"No? I will admit, it is not as extravagant as the Chaos Project, or the Gaia Manifestation, but Emerl almost worked, and you didn't see that until the last minute, did you?"

"Come on Robotnik! Aren't your legions enough? I thought you were overconfident, not paranoid!"

"I'm hurt that you think of me that way, princess. No, this is only a storage facility, believe it or not." The doctor cackled, from wherever he was.

"A holding facility, for what-?"

"Why, you don't know? That fox didn't tell you?"

"What are you talking about?" Sally shouted into the darkness. "Spit it out!"

"I don't see the harm in it, since I am almost there. My dear princess, as much as it would give me pleasure to march on the Mobians with my legion of steel, the super emerald is a far greater surprise."

"Super- is that what Tails is after?"

"My my, dear princess, didn't you know? I thought he would have told you, after all, you are such good friends…"

A trio of heavy-battle-combots, mounted on jet-pods rose up from the blackness, humanoid constructs painted the same colour as the pedestal and training searchlights on the young princess. Sally turned to run, to be blocked by another two of the heavy robots, (how had she not heard them?), and then snared by steel cables.

"Ooh, big mistake." Sally heard, barely a whisper in her ear, before electricity flared up one of the cables into the heavy robots. It struggled momentarily, twitching and listing as two AIs fought for control of the systems, then it stopped, steadied, and gave a barely perceptible nod.  
Nicole was in control.

Robotnik only realised something was actually wrong, from wherever his vantage point was, when the seventy-tonne combat robot angled sideways and rammed the combot next to it, driving it into the wall as the eleven-odd weapons opened fire on the other three. Sally gave a silent prayer that the weapons were all laser or energy based – she couldn't dodge bullets very well.

The first volley of fire crippled one of the robots, and it dropped away into the abyss…still attached to Sally's leg. Nicole/combot darted forward, jets whining with the stress of pushing the heavy object so fast, and its hand fastened around the steel cable, crushing it and pulling sally free.  
"Sally, go! Get yourself a ring! I will hold them off!" The Nicole/combot snapped to her, waving a hand back down the corridor. The squirrel was inclined to stay and help her AI friend, but she saw the odds – two heavily-armed Combots against one slightly glitchy one and a squirrel with no hope of penetrating that sort of armour. She took the advice, and sprinted away, Robotnik cursing his luck over the speakers.

Nicole bided her time, waiting until Sally was as far away as possible, then fired every weapon she could think of, straight ahead, past the two heavy combots and towards the chamber, then watched in abject dismay as each shot pulsed off a slightly transparent force field, enclosing the suspended chamber. That had been her gambit, damage the container, collapse the tunnel, then get out of there. Well, time for plan B…the mech shuddered as laser-fire pitted and scored across the armoured plating that she controlled.

Angling the thrusters, she jetted forward as fast as the motors would allow, ramming into the other two combots and carrying them out over the abyss, towards the podium and it's shield.

"By my spark I hope this works." She murmured to herself as she distance between her and the flickering shield closed, then the three robots crashed into it. Sparks flew and metal began to heat up as the energy generated in the shield met with folded steel plates, and in a brilliant display of light and noise, the shield collapsed, allowing the charred remains of two of the robots, propelled by the third, to continue on their collision course.

They passed under the little pillars of light/energy, snapping them as they moved, each one writhing in protest then evaporating like water, and the giant platform began to list as the weight was transferred to the other side, and one by one, the little strands of power lost the battle to hold it aloft.

As the three robots completed their path, the platform gave out finally, and dropped away with a screech of tortured metal, into the black abyss below. Robotnik let out a screech of animalistic rage as his creation fell, cursing Nicole and Sally and any other Mobian he could think of.

"You miserable wretches! You will pay for this transgression! You think you-" Nicole muted him from the system. She gave the combot a system check, detecting several major and minor system breaches, and made her choice. She abandoned the robot, letting its control drop from her as she retracted back into Sally's commlink. It gladdened her to see that her charge had found a rifle, and she ran a quick schematic check of the weapon through the commlink.

"Won't be much good against armour." Sally jumped – she didn't know Nicole was back already. "I guess Robotnik never expected to have his infantry taking on armour."

"It should be good enough to damage weaker components though, right? That's all I need." Sally replied, having made that assumption, and having already chided herself for the choice, she wasn't in the mood for another lecture, and her voice came across harsher than she had expected.

"I was merely offering a warning." Nicole mumbled, picking up on it. "I destroyed the containment hanger by the way." She perked up, eager to change the subject to avoid the awkwardness that would have followed.

"Do we know what it was for?" Sally, it seemed, was also glad for this change in thought.

"I'm afraid not, but I expect Robotnik will tell us. I assume you are planning to go after him?" the AI ventured.

"We can't wait for reinforcements – it would take too long to get them out here…scramble some of your combat drones, just in case, Nicole. I want some reliable backup when the shit inevitably hits the fan." The squirrel worked her way round that overlander phrase, and found it suitable for the situation she was in.

"Done. They should be here within the day, provided they don't get intercepted."

Something large slashed over Sally's head, detonating against the steel wall, and she caught a whiff of engine fuel as the two-man Type-36 team reloaded the heavy rocket launcher from down the corridor. She felt something warm on her shoulder and saw her fur began to matt with the blood from a shrapnel cut, and winced from the pain.

"Can you disrupt them from here?" she asked the AI. The robots were half-done reloading.

"I need direct contact." They were almost done.

"Never mind." Sally dismissed the idea, raising the rifle to her shoulder and peering down the iron-sight. She found her mark, and fired a single shot, hearing a soft _-pink-_ as it bounced off metal, and then the rocket, believing its target had just been hit, exploded, still in the launcher.

She hadn't been aiming for the crew – she had shot at the rocket after they had finished loading it. Since most missiles and rockets had a computer built into the front, telling the rocket to explode once it him something, anything that gave the sensor a solid whack would trigger it, and Sally had known that well enough.

Rising from her crouch and supressing the pain in her shoulder, she sprinted on into the base.

* * *

Tails' eyes snapped open. How long had he been asleep? Was it long? He hadn't meant to…well, it didn't matter now, did it? He had gone and done it, and now he had to keep moving. He stood slightly, shaking his shoulders to dislodge the snow settled there, and using his namesakes, shattered the frozen rock he had sheltered in.

Immediately he was once again surrounded by driving wind and hail and snow, blasting down from the peak, where he was headed. His sensitive nose detected faint traces of smoke, taken by the wind. His shadow had lit a fire, it seemed – they were well prepared for this little excursion it was turning out to be.

Something stung his cheeks...something warm…then more, more thimble-sized objects snapping out of the gloom ahead – bullets, the mechs had found him already. He sense them ahead, vague humanoids, blurred by the harsh weather and his own fatigue, and the warmer shape of his shadow, closer than before. He had to move – they had infra-red and various other sensors that would penetrate these conditions, he only had a vague idea where they might be, courtesy of the chaos emerald. Calling up ten rings from his store, he programmed them into prepared light rings. When they were ready, he sprinted forward into the hail, tossing them left and right and every other direction, and soon enough they began to flare up, creating little heat-points all over. His ploy worked, some of the fire redirected itself, angling towards the other targets, trying to cover all the bases. Tails was still a target, but less of one. He sensed movement behind him and dove forward as the Iblis-Worm burst from the snow, showering him with sand. The Iblis worm was a piece of technology Robotnik had invented, based on Soleannan lore about a 'living flame'. Essentially a series of segments with robotic muscles for tunnelling, the key weapon was at the tip, where it split into a three-point mouth housing a heavy disintegrator ray.

Tails landed hard on the ice, rolling and snapping a chaos spear into readiness, released it into the open mouth of the worm, down the barrel of the disintegrator. The target exploded violently, showering the prone fox with a hail of red-hot metal fragments. Though the metal burned his skin, it warmed him from the freezing world around him and he welcomed it, letting the heat and pain fuel his body.

Using his Tails he launched himself from prone to standing, and pivoted in one motion, continuing his low sprint towards his attackers up ahead. The closest were taking on form, white skeletal Type-42s, a silvery metal frame supporting white armour plates, a small, short-range automatic machine gun and a twin-barrelled rocket launcher. They weren't designed for static defence – they were light, and combined with a pair of manoeuvrable jets, surprisingly agile and versatile in many combat situations.

At this point, they outmatched him in the air and on land. His flight relied on pushing wind through his tails, but they just needed more fuel for their jets. They were outfitted for ranged combat, and the best he could manage was a pair of chaos spears, which, unlike the rockets, _didn't_ have a homing system.

One hand went to the emerald on his chest, and he played his joker. "chaos control!" he shouted, and everything froze, time suspended for a few seconds by the power of the chaos emeralds. He rose from a crouch, batting aside suspended flakes of snow, and moved quickly to the closest target. Time was of the essence, and, using the half a minute given to him, he planted three chaos spears, each in front of an individual target. As his freeze-time ran out, the chaos energy exploded forward, caught up by the time-stream once more, bursting through the fragile chestplates of the Type-42s.

The bullets resumed flying, minus three guns.

It left about a dozen, added to whatever was at the smugglers base in Ice Paradise.

The robots switched to missiles, now they could acquire a clear target for the lock-ons to do their work. Tails began to hear the tune of rockets, _pop-whoosh-crump-bang!_ over and over, an unkind mantra repeated by twelve robots all around him.

Tails flicked out a couple of ring bombs, tossing them on the move, drawing fire as he launched himself into the air, tails spinning furiously to counter the driving wind. He passed over one robot, its weapons angling skyward to swat him from the air…and he dropped a chaos spear on it. He heard it explode behind him, a small plume of smoke and heat warming his back for a moment before he banked hard in the air, ploughing into the snow as a fresh volley of bullets and rockets took themselves over his head. The soothing warmth was arrested, replaced by nothing but cold, and Tails felt his hibernation instinct kicking in, trying to force him to sleep, to preserve resources…it was part of every Kitsune, held back by mental discipline. He forced himself to his knees, fighting the lethargy, raking his claws across his forearm and seeing the blood run from it. The pain brought him a moment's respite and the warm blood running the length of his arm fought a battle against his fatigue, and he stood, slowly, as the mechs began to close ranks around him.

He rose against them, half awake, vision greying thanks to this damnable instinct, and then he heard it.

_"You pathetic bastard! I am not getting killed because you feel sleepy! Get your ass in gear and break their backs! I've seen you do it, do it now!"_ Hyperion.

That voice, the memories, the rage…the first robot, about to finish him at point blank…his clawed had lashed out through primal rage and drives, and plunged through the light armour and into the chest of the robot as it began to spark, systems overloading and shorting out. "Chaos spear!" Tails shouted, channelling the power down through his arm and straight into his target. The attack, powered by animalistic rage, didn't just blast the back out of the robot, but also rippled down its arms, shattering the steel and fibre into thousands of glasslike fragments.

Tails wheeled as the fragments bit into his flesh, drawing blood – he barely felt them, his mind fogged by adrenalin and bloodlust. More chaos spears exploded into readiness in the palms of his hands, and he began to launch them at anything that came near, sidestepping bullet streams and rockets with contemptuous ease.

Half of the remainder fell as chaos energy tore apart their systems, liquefying steel and warping fibres.

The other five learnt the lesson, jetting back to finish him at range…ad then he disappeared. Their lock-ons disappeared, and coaxial optics spun, searching for the lost target as was programming. Then their audio receptors picked up something, a faint whisper compared to the wind that blocked most audio in the battle zone. "Chaos blast…"

Then they disappeared in a blast of light and energy, the blast flashing ice to steam and water, forming a crater of fresh water, the only one for miles in any direction.

Tails, hanging above their heads on spinning tails, lowered his hands, the palms smoking from the discharge of energy, as his height dropped, as he lowered himself into the steam and water. As his body heat returned, the rage and hate faded slowly, and the pain began to make itself known. In the water he checked himself over, discovering wounds all over his back and front. He frowned, wincing. He hadn't noticed the extent of his injuries. A snap of his fingers, another pair of rings, and he absorbed them, letting them fix the smaller cuts and cauterise the larger wounds.

"That was close." He told himself. "Heh, I never thought it would be that pervert that would save my life."

He stayed in the water, letting his muscles and mind relax, letting the adrenalin drain away. He stayed until it began to cool, the weather reasserting its control on the environment. Then he dragged himself from the crater and used a pair of light-ringsto dry himself. His fur was his only insulation – he couldn't afford for it to lose effectiveness thanks to a little water.

Once he was satisfied, he absorbed the spent rings, using the last dregs of energy as a supplement to his healing, and set off once more, feeling more refreshed than he had the entire climb.

Just out of vision, his shadow followed him, tracking his position with an auspex in one hand, a pistol in the other. They began to pass the shattered wreckage of the combat robots, each one damaged far beyond repair – Robotnik needed to make his models stronger. Then they came to the crater, water still warm enough not to freeze, surrounded by a bare handful of charred, melted pieces of armour and chassis.

"By the source. What did he do?" the shadow murmured, awed by the power Tails had at his command. Once again, their thoughts asked the same questions. Are you making the right choice? Is this the right thing to do? Does he need to die? Would you even be able to?

Their thoughts recalled the words Scourge had said, before they had left.

"I'm going to put this plain and simple, 'cause your brain ain't big enough to get it in any larger terms." He had turned away, not even looking at them. "Tails is after something I want, and you are going to get it for me. Miles will give you some equipment that might mean you last a bit longer…" the Scourge had picked them up by the throat. "And believe me, you cannot even begin to imagine what I will do to you if you return empty-handed."  
He had dropped the shadow then, and they had left with the equipment given by Miles, through a warp ring, through to Mobius.


	6. Chapter 5

The valley was warmer – marginally. The cold still chilled him to the bone, but at least the driving hail was reserved for the parts of the track specifically tailored to allow the weather to penetrate the walls of Ice Paradise. At this time of year the place was all but empty, the only life a few feral creatures and the caretakers. From the howling wind and gales only a short distance behind him, the place felt even emptier than the mountainside, though there were likely many more of Robotnik's mechs around the place, far greater numbers than he had seen on the cliffside. The snow crunched and compacted beneath his shoes as he trod the pathways in the valley, eyes searching the walls and floors for any sign of movement.

His first port of call was the 'Paradise administration centre, to see if the CEO or his staff knew anything – that is, if they were still there. It was just as likely that the mechs had captured or killed them, in which case, there was nothing he could do unless they were held nearby. If they were…he would attempt to get them free, but he could not allow it to interfere with his task. The super emerald was more important than their lives, and making sure Robotnik didn't get his hands on it was far more important than _his_ life.

What disturbed him was the complete lack of activity – there was no-one, not even a mech for him to pulp, the valley was empty, even for this season. Tails paused, supporting himself against the frozen trunk of a solitary tree, to work things through.

He could keep collateral damage to a minimum…use a modified locator ring to search for life…he froze, mid-thought, as a sound, barely more than a whisper of a rustle, sounded in his ears. He flicked out the locator ring, spinning it, stowing it again after a single turn, and stood again, moving along down the track to where one of the ramps built into the rocks stood, inert. The sound had died away as quickly as it had come, but its chaos echo had held form for longer, long enough for Tails to determine the source.

In a hollowed out alcove underneath, he found his first survivor. A snowy white wolf. It explained why she had managed to escape, natural camouflage and the knowledge of the mountains. As he appeared at the mouth of the hideaway she yelped, and he acted out of instinct. Darting forward, he clamped one hand round her midriff and the other over her head, then he whispered into her ear.

"Now, when I remove my hands, you are not going to shout and you are not going to run. Follow those rules and you may just survive." He waited until she nodded, then slowly lowered his arms. She sat there, quivering slightly from both the cold and his bared claws. He raised both hands in explanation, "I lost them in the climb. I am Tails, Miles Prower. Now you."

She tried to speak, managing only a parched croak or noise. He stopped her before she could try again. Never taking his eyes off her, he flicked out the convertor ring, letting it hang in mid-air. With one hand he piled slow through it, letting clear water drip out. With his other hand he held hers under it, until she cupped a handful of water. When he removed his hand, it went immediately to her mouth and disappeared in two swift gulps. She sat there panting for a bit, finally having gained some sustenance.

"Now."

"Morgana, just one of the clerks in the IP office." She spluttered, regaining her voice.

"You were evicted from the office – Robotnik's mechs?"

She nodded animatedly as a response. Everyone knew who Robotnik was, and it was definitely him who had ordered the assault. "Anyone who ran did – the others were rounded up and taken somewhere. I didn't see…I don't even know if they're still alive. Gods I don't even know why he attacked us?"

"Propaganda." Tails offered, "Robotnik may be an evil tyrant but he looks for the easy way out. Hurt out attractions, the youth, get the message across that no-one is safe, make us surrender for the sake of living." It wasn't a total fabrication, but Tails couldn't explain the real reason. "Listen, if I get their attention, is their somewhere you can get to, somewhere safe?"

"I- I think so."

"Keep this." He passed her the convertor ring. "It should be good for another six uses, should convert most foliage or stuff like this snow into something you can use to keep going."

She took it from him, inspecting it curiously, turning it over and over in her hands.

"How does it-"

"It's complicated, believe me. Wait here until you hear the sounds of fighting, then run."

He didn't wait from an answer, standing and leaving quickly, flipping over the lip of the ramp to start the uphill climb, towards the administration centre. From his visits there he knew the admin centre was dug into the side of the valley, almost invisible from a glance. It wasn't the tourist centre – it wasn't there for visitors to gawp at and enter searching for trinkets and snowboarding advice.

Tails did not know how he would approach the centre – it was either land or sky and any sentries would spot him quickly. He could not go in through the back, built into the valley wall as it was.

Time to play it the way Sonic did – run straight in, screw the consequences. He was due a comeuppance, and this would likely furnish him with one.  
A stream of high calibre bullets chose for him, stitching a line through the snow from above.

Reacting, he backflipped away from the line, snatching a look at his attacker in the process. Only a surveillance drone, on a patrol circuit. No doubt as well it would have transmitted a distress call, calling others to the location to deal with the threat – it was his advantage now. He silenced the _-thup-_ of the sentry drone with a chaos spear, thrown almost as an afterthought, as he decided how to prepare the battleground.

Two minutes later the defensive party arrived – just another handful of the Type-42s, mobilised to deal with a single threat. He destroyed them with well-placed rings bombs, chaos spears, and an occasional talon – they were not much of a threat, not for him, not on this battlefield. He progressed up the mountain unmolested for some time, until the administration centre came into view. Robotnik had transformed it into an armed base – apparently he was planning to move here next – the centre itself had been demolished, replaced with one of his eyesores and surrounded by a defensive wall dotted with turrets, squadrons of drones and Type-42s doing patrol circuits around, with source-knows how many units inside. He could sense Iblis-Worms active underneath too – this would be a battle on all planes.

They had not seen his approach yet; he had a little time. If his sense was right – and it usually was – Robotnik had probably managed to position the base directly over the smuggler's site, but he couldn't take them all on himself. Inwardly, he cursed having left his communicator behind.  
An idea formed in his brain, a gamble, but there was one set of cats paws he had yet to use…

"I know you're there." He heard himself say, over his shoulder. "You've been tracking me for some time – since the first step, I think."  
No response.

"I know it's you…Fiona. I've known that since the cave."

The name drew her out, that crimson gymnast of a fox Tails had been so fond of less than two years ago. The suit she wore was mostly fully enclosing, but the tail was free and so, for some reason, were her arms from the forearm down.

"Take off the hood." He told her, "don't hide from me."

She did as he asked, one handed, the other still holding on to a Moebian pistol. She undid the clasps, pulling back the mask and hood as one item, exposing a cream muzzle, startling blue eyes and finally the tumbling locks of dark brown hair.

"How did-" she began, Tails stopping her mid-question.

"How did I know it was you?" he asked, a little contemptuously, "I'm a chaos adept. I knew that someone was following me. I knew it wasn't another adept, or I would have been able to tell who it was via a chaos signature. It couldn't be one of my friends or allies, or they would not have gone to the trouble of staying concealed. That narrowed it down, but what really told me it was _you_ was the cave, when you shot out that spider." He held up the spent bullet case. "Long, two-stage bullet, fired from a low-recoil sniper rifle to allow unenhanced Mobians the capability to deal damage to armoured targets. Also very good for shattering skulls." He tossed it aside. "But there's something you want to know, too, isn't there?"

She remained silent, glaring at him. Tails didn't notice it – he could already tell what she was feeling. "You know Scourge sent you after a super emerald, but what you want to know is why _you?_ He's growing tired of having you around, Fiona."

"That's not true!" she snapped, unable to keep silent. "He loves me!"

"No he doesn't. You know it, you want to believe it, but you know it isn't true, and please, do not insult me by lying. He never felt anything for you, Fiona. You want to know what he thought of you? You were just his little sex toy! Something to fuck if he was bored!"

All Fiona could do was shake her head, eyes closed – the barrel of the pistol lowered slightly. "It's…you're lying…" she whispered.

"No I'm not, but you still cling to him. You still hang on to the vain hope that he might feel something for you in his heart. His heart is blackened, his heart is dead, Fiona – he isn't capable of love. You still hold on, after what he's done to you. I can see the cuts and bruises through your fur from here, Fiona, how much has he hurt you? How violent has he been, hmm?" Tails didn't want an answer – he knew the depths of depravity at callousness that Scourge the Hedgehog was capable of. It was just as well that Fiona couldn't think of an answer.

"Now he's sent you after the super emerald to get you out of the house. You've becoming nothing more than a fixture to him, a consumable that he retains for the sake of convenience, and now even that has run dry. He's sent you here to scrape what's left of you out before he finally deals with you. I expect he's already thought of how to kill you off." Tails hated himself for having to say this, to her, but he had one shot at this, and if he blew it he could never try again.

"No….he- he wouldn't do that…" her voice was barely a whisper.

"I'm going after the super emerald, no matter who gets in my way Fiona, and I am not hanging around for anyone. I'm giving you this one chance. I'm going into that base, and you can either go back to Scourge, go back to the beatings, rape and almost certainly a painful death." He stepped to her, taking her arms in his hands. She didn't resist – he took it as a good sign. "Your other option is to come with me, to return to a world where the people are on your side, to return to the people you left behind…who felt it keenly, and an atmosphere that isn't slowly killing you. This is the choice I offer you Fiona, but do not mistake my persistence for desperation. If you say no, if you leave, return to Scourge, then I will not follow you and ask again. You said no those years ago, and this is the only second chance you get."

She turned her head away, but he could see the tears welling in her eyes and she was shaking visibly. With what? Fear? Sorrow? Delight? He couldn't tell. But he knew his words were having an effect – for better or worse, he was getting across to her.

"I need to think." She said finally, and he released her, watching her face for any sign he could find.

"Then for now, you need to help me get inside that fortress."

"Your trusting me even before I give you an answer? You're taking chances."

"No I'm not – either way you are after the super emerald, and you can't get to it without me. If you stay you come with me anyway, and if you don't, you won't risk going back to Scourge without his prize."

"Damn you." She muttered to him.

"All in good time." He offered sarcastically. "You're going to use that rifle of yours to crack the turret optics and give me an opening."

"And you plan to take on the rest of them?" Fiona was analytical – that was one of the things that had drawn him to her – and she was working out how to get in herself.

"The turrets can put out six streams of heavy calibre bullets at about six a second. Walking into that is about as big a death wish as stepping off the edge of Angel Island. Take those down, the others are just flying targets. Every active combot is only using low calibre ammunition and rockets, nothing hard to handle."

"Right, so the optics?" she confirmed, and began to assemble the sniper rifle. She was efficient, Tails noted, it was almost special operations fast.

"Yea. They should put the turrets out of action. Don't try for the ammunition coils, they will be shielded. Robotnik is mad, but smart."

"Yea, yea, tell me something I don't know." She muttered, trying to appear indifferent to him, as she dropped to prone and fitted the stand to the barrel, loading the first shot a few moments later. Tails heard a barely audible click as Fiona pulled the trigger, sending the first shot firing away with a puff of smoke. He followed the aim and saw the bullet shatter and then explode in the vulnerable optics of the first turret.

"Three more." He told her. "Don't bother with the ones at the far edges, it's just wasting shots."

"Copy that." She confirmed, loading the second shot and firing. "Second down."

The combot patrols were reacting, widening their orbit of the command centre in search for the target.

_Click, thup, smash._ Third turret down.

The patrols saw them, and bullets began to whip their way, scything chips of ice and stone from where they sheltered. Fiona loaded the fourth, bullet, taking aim. As she pulled the trigger, a piece of rocky shrapnel ricocheted off the high-powered scope, and the rifle jinked to the side as the bullet left the chamber. They watched helplessly as it bounced harmlessly off the armoured turret carapace. Fiona began to load a fifth bullet for a second try, but Tails stopped her, pointing at the encroaching patrols.

Using the rocks to gain some momentum, Tails launched from cover into the air, rising to meet the Type-42s as the remaining turret that could draw a bead on Tails spun and let loose streams of tracer bullets into the air in an unending stream.

Fiona dropped the rifle where it laid and switched to the heavy-bore pistol and combat knife, shredding a pair of Type-42s as they descended on her.

In the air, Tails was using techniques he hadn't used for years, some of the old ideas Sonic had shown him how to use, he was bouncing from target to target as best as his chaos-enhanced body would allow. He didn't have the benefit of chaos ricochet, a passive ability of Sonic's that let him bounce off almost anything in any direction, but Tails was still better in the air that Sonic was, and his namesakes gave him some measure of manoeuvrability. He was having to bounce from target to target to avoid being caught in the stream of bullets the turret was unleashing, and none of them were letting him close the distance for him to take it out personally.

Fiona shot down another two before reloading, firing at anything that presented itself.

* * *

**Four Hours prior…**

Sally was using the butt of the rifle to lever open a fuse hatch to gain access to another doorway. Nicole, after battling her way through four levels of Robotnik computer security, she had pinpointed the dictator's location. He was the only organic in the entire facility, apart from Sally.

A clang and squeal heralded the plate's final tearing, exposing a clutch of interlocking cables.

Sally didn't bother trying to rewire them – she had no idea which did what – so she unloaded a few shots from the lasblaster into the fragile circuitry instead, and watched with a grin as the door ground half open. It was a big door, and half open was more than enough for the squirrel to fit through.  
The only footholds on the other side was a single unbroken line of hexagonal panels, each about as big as sally was tall.

"Well now, princess, I thought you smarter than having walked into this trap." Robotnik's voice sounded from the darkness. Sally spun as a force field rose up in front of the doorway, sealing it. Even so, she meant to run as the entire line shuddered violently and she fell to her knees.

As the light came up, revealing another great dome covering a pit that dropped away into nothingness, the walkway split into the individual hexagons, placing themselves at various orientations around the room.

Robotnik, in his little pod, hovered down from the ceiling. "Well, princess, I would have asked for someone more notable to fight, but I think your death should draw Sonic out, don't you agree?"

"Bite me." She snapped at him.

"Now, princess, if you don't go quietly, I will be forced to take action."

"Fuck you, giving up isn't on my agenda."

"Ah well, worth a shot." Robotnik shrugged, and typed in a command on his keyboard. A mech followed him down from the hole in the ceiling, Robotnik's command pod fitting into the neck. Humanoid, both arms terminated in a giant cannon, the forearms housing rocket projectors along each rotation.

Instead of feet they split into four artillery pieces, each on an individual pivot, meaning they didn't all have to be pointing in the same direction. "Now, this room is secured for this robot, so don't try anything – just hold still and this will be over quickly."

Sally did anything but that. Taking a running jump, she leapt across to the next plate, and then the next as Robotnik began to send streams of rockets at her, and it took all of her available skill and stamina to evade them.

As she closed the gap, knowing that the rifle would do little against the heavy armour, so she just chucked the whole thing at the command centre. It bounced off, to little effect.

"Well, my dear, you really are desperate, aren't you?" the doctor chuckled, casually swiping at the fleeing squirrel with one of the mechanical arms.

She attempted to leap over, as the arm clipped her boots and sent her spinning off to crack loudly against wall.

She began to drop.

It was nothing short of a miracle that a golden ring chose to pop into existence below her that moment. As she fell, half-conscious, natural survival instinct took over, and she snatched at the lifeline. The ring, unaffected by gravity and unchanged by chaos users, hung there, Sally clinging to it, and she had to come up with something quickly. Sally began to spin, over and over the ring. The little golden circle spun on its axis, but otherwise remained still, and as she reached the horizontal line, she released, a single thought flickering through her mind in a desperate gambit.

_Give me the spear!_

There was no reason for the ring to have responded – it was a new ring, undirected, not tuned to summon the ancient weapon, yet something, some part of Sally, or the ring, or the spear, triggered _something._

As Sally let go of the ring, the small golden circle disappearing in a shower of sparkles behind her, her ears were assaulted by a thunderbolt as her feet touched down on one of the hexagon footholds. Behind Robotnik's mech, a patch of the wall began to glow a worrying shade of red, then yellow, then white as the wall burst apart, molten rivulets of metal running away and dripping into the abyss. Through it surged what could only be described as light, ripping through one of the artillery pieces serving as the mech's leg, and into Sally's waiting hands.

Up close she could see it, the shimmering, blazing form of the spear of Rhadamanthus, lightning spitting between her palms and the haft of the weapon. It had never done this before, but she would make as much of it as she could.

"Nicole, report?" she spluttered into the comm.

"I- this- I'm not sure what has occurred, ma'am. Everything that my sensors are telling me point to the spear now outputting at almost full power, but it makes no sense! You shouldn't have even been able to call it with an undirected ring. It doesn't-" Sally didn't hear the rest, for Robotnik had recommenced his attack.

Rockets flared and darted from the projectors, carving contrails in the air as they locked on and arrowed towards her. The spear vibrated, then blurred in her hands as it shot out to deflect them all, spinning them off into the wall as the unbreakable blade cracked the delicate sensors, though more often than not it simply tore through the entire missile, turning it into a shower of metal that liquefied then evaporated in the intense heat that seemed to radiate from the spear.

She saw the look on Robotnik's face turn from one of immense delight to one of confusion, then abject horror. Time to finish things off. She jumped from one panel to another with ease, the spear's power lending itself to her, empowering her beyond what she thought she could ever achieve.

The mech jinked to the side, trying to increase the distance again, but sally was having none of it. Whenever it tried to move, a shaft of white lightning from the tip of the blade held it back, lest it become the new target. She bracketed her foe as she closed the distance. Then, when she was close enough to finish things off, she jumped straight into its chest, spear held back and behind her – she made the strike, a connection of metals that Robotnik could not hope to avoid, and the spear saw its task and directed itself. Cracks split along the surface, revealing not the insides of the mechanical behemoth, but an eerie light shining from every wound, every crevice, every fracture and damaged section. Without warning the monstrosity exploded sending both combatants tumbling away. Robotnik through the hole in the ceiling, Sally backwards into the wall, but once again the spear saved her, jabbing down and arresting the momentum against one of the footholds.

"Sally? Sally!" the voice was Nicole's, heard from far off, though the source was in her ear.

"What…what is it?"

"Sally, you are beginning to burn!" the words felt somehow they didn't apply to her, in this chaos-empowered state, but some fragment of her, the part that held reason, the part that remained Mobian, called out to her as she lifted her hand. Indeed, it was beginning to smoke, her body not meant for the channelling of chaos energy, let alone this much. The spear was a conduit, and had prevented her just exploding, but it couldn't do it forever – it had been created with chaos adepts in mind, after all.

The Mobian part of her not fogged by the chaos began to fight back, a desperate, earnest battle to regain control before she was destroyed.

With a howl of pain and rage she broke through, and she spear began to lose form, the glow and electricity fading slowly.

"Power levels are dropping…" Nicole reported with nothing less than complete relief.

"I…it was…the spear channelled chaos energy…" Sally managed to cough out.

"Rest here for now – Robotnik isn't coming back for now – the damage you did wasn't just to that mech. I think it applied to everything nearby of similar manufacture. I checked the cameras half the legions seem to be combusting. My drone squad should be able to mop up the rest with little difficulty. Then they can get in here and pick us up."

"f- fine, but I'm going after Tails."

"I would strongly advise against it. In your current state-"

"Don't lecture me Nicole, I know you were advising him."

"I did no such thing!" the AI sounded indignant. "He was using Metallix, and the robot wouldn't listen to me. When I tried to talk to Tails he said he was going after Scourge, in the Ice Cap zone. Robotnik obliged so kindly by telling us what he is really after, but I still don't…"

"It's my call Nicole, and I'm going. I will only stay long enough to make sure this place is dead and buried, then we are leaving." Sally was disappointed in Tails, that he had lied to her so flawlessly.

"Do you want me to call transport?"

"I'll cross that hurdle when I come to it."


	7. Chapter 6

Tails had run out of targets, and now he jinked and strafed, trying to outfly the bullet streams pelting from the remaining auto-turret. His channel for movement was limited – fly too close to the centre, the turret would be straight on target, fly to far out, he could get caught up with one of the others. Too far back and he risked exposing Fiona to the blitz of heavy calibre rounds. She had enough of her own troubles, a squad of Type-36s bolstered by Type-42s from the air…he had an idea. It wasn't tactically sound nor particularly safe, but perhaps it would help sway Fiona's views.

He dropped to almost vertical, flying directly down the tunnel of bullets.

"Ring burst, fifty rings!" he shouted, his emerald rushing to respond to the command. It began to toss out rings all around him, until he was surrounded by a veritable aura of the small glowing rings. He stretched out his arms, and began programming them mid-flight, locators, light rings, convertors, bubble shields, and a few he hadn't tested before, the mirror ring and fusion ring. The instant he finished, he lobbed a ring bomb ahead for an airburst detonation, arresting his flight and allowing him to switch directions, namesakes propelling him away.

The rings stayed behind, bullet-fire bouncing off the ring-wall he had built up. It would not last – ring shields, even highly charged ones, were not meant to stand up to sustained fire, but it might buy him just enough time to pull this ridiculous stunt. Abruptly he stopped again in mid-air, and dropped like a stone towards the ground. The turret followed him, pumping out rounds indiscriminately, and as he dropped, his carefully calculated fall intersected with the Type-42s, and in moments they too were caught in the stream of fire, all but evaporating as the heavy-bore shells tore through their light carapaces like paper in a firestorm.

Almost like a weight on itself, Fiona felt the fire bearing down upon her lessen, but she could not halt or hesitate yet – whilst the air support seemed to have disappeared, the Type-36s still posed a dangerous threat to her. She moved and reloaded with method and speed, using rocks to provide some cover against twin arm-cannons and shoulder-mounted rocket pods, and she was running out of cover as she emptied another clip into the brainbox of one Type-36 that reared in front of her. The heavy-bore pistol also fired a two stage bullet, but the bullets were shorter, stubbier, than the sniper rifle. The first shot discharged lit magnesium, melting away armour, then the second initiated a chemical reaction that produced a miniature plasma core. In net effect it did more damage than the sniper rifle, but the range was severely limited by the shot type. Something blurred behind her and she spun on the balls of her feet, firing two shots, one into the head and the other into the chest. Both shots hit home and the target detonated in a geyser of metal.

In the air, Tails completed his fall, namesakes spinning furiously to kill the momentum as he slammed into the powdery snow on all fours. His eyes focussed for the briefest of moments on Fiona, beleaguered as she was. He had done her a mercy, but it would take blind faith that she was as good as he hoped – he had helped her at his own risk, now the turret demanded his attention. He spun low and fired off toward it, trying to stay ahead of the descending stream of bullets. Thankfully, the turret was trying to take the most direct route to him, and it was already whirring with the sound of gears and cogs grinding in a futile attempt to keep pace with the small yellow blur streaking towards it.

Tails launched at an angle, carrying him into the centre of the maelstrom of lead, the eye of the storm, and the distance was closing. Fifty metres…forty…thirty…twenty…ten…a lightning shield erupted violently around him, fuelled by almost a hundred rings, as he crashed head on into the armoured turret. The metal bubbled and spat and lightning flared across the surface, the metal flashing a rainbow of colours as it heated up, reacting to the ferocious energies rippling off the bubble. Tails kept up the pressure as metal liquefied, gobbets of it spitting away as the pressure tore them from mountings, and then, with a sound akin to that of a bubble popping, the turret exploded outwards in a splatter of liquid metal and glass and electronics.

The lightning shield, pushed beyond its limits, flared out and died, leaving Tails hanging in mid-air through virtue of his tails, as he lowered himself to the ground, fatigued by pumping so much energy into that manoeuvre. He still had uncounted rings available, stored in the emerald space, but he had developed a healthy paranoia about how many rings he used every day. He looked back at Fiona, but decided not to go to her aid. Even from this considerable distance, he could see her doing just fine, and he wanted to see exactly what she was capable of now.

_"Stop picturing her tits; that's my job."_ Hyperion sniggered.

Despite the irony of the accuser, Tails blushed furiously. "I wasn't."

_"Oh come on, we all know you were. Even Umbra agrees. I can see them now, those firm, round-"_

"Shut up you sick little shit. I don't care about your fetishes here, now kindly shut up or I will shut you up." Tails snapped back.

He did shut up – he shut up fast as that last threat issued from Tails' lips. He knew that Tails could silence him any time, he just hadn't so far because he served as a useful wild card to play. The kitsune watched Fiona from a distance as she cleared up the last of the patrol. When the last _-bang-_ sounded and the valley fell silent, save for the ominous vibrations emanating from the facility, Tails left his position, travelling over to her at a slow, measured pace. Even from this distance, he saw her take a small object from her pocket – it glinted gold in the mid-afternoon sun – and watch it for a moment before putting it away again.

"What was that?" he asked casually, as soon as he was in earshot.

She glanced at him guiltily, but said nothing.

"It looked like a ring." He said.

He stared at her for only a few seconds before her willpower crumbled under his scrutinising gaze, and she pulled a ring, a starburst set in the centre, from one of the pouches on her belt.

"Miles said this would detect chaos energy, and vibrate the more there was." She whispered to the vulpine.

"So you could have tracked the super emerald without my help." It was a statement, not a question.

She nodded. "I already have – it's been telling me to go to rainbow valley since we got to the island, actually it started on the freighter, but only just before we got off."

Useful information…now they knew where it was. But one question nagged at him.

"Then why did you follow me here? You knew where the emerald was, you could have gone and taken it, then left without me even knowing."

She couldn't find the answer. Tails had suspicions, but he kept his council.

"So, back down the mountain?" she asked finally.

"Oh crap…that's going to be fun…begin as two foxes, arrive as two snowballs…" Tails sighed heavily, and he caught the beginnings of a smile from Fiona. They faded quickly, but they were there nonetheless. They were there! He was getting through to her!

"We could go down on snowboards." He realised, thinking aloud.

"Are you joking here?" Fiona asked, sceptical about the idea.

"Why, not good on a board?"

"No, it's just…" she trailed off, "it doesn't seem right, given the circumstances."

"It's the boards or the tundra again. At least the valley is sheltered, but you're going to have to leave the rifle behind."

"You must be mad if you think I'm setting it down."

"No, I'm pragmatic. We need to travel light and move fast. I have rings that can deal with food and water, and half the stuff you are carrying you won't need. You can leave the stealth suit behind, along with most of the gear you brought with you."

"You're asking me to strip?" she asked, eyes widening at the thought.  
"Well, one guy in here wants you to." He tapped his temple with one claw, "but no, not completely. You can leave the rifle and the limb sections of the suit, and the hood, you don't need that any more. Keep the pistol and ammunition though – I don't want to keep having to save you each time."  
Fiona grumbled and protested, but did as he commanded, stripping off the gloves and sleeves and leggings, muttering a near-constant stream of expletives in the process. Eventually she stood before him, boots, a close-fitting yet solid bodysuit that covered her regions, and the belt, with the pistol and remaining clips hooked onto it.

"Does this please you, master?" she mocked, feigning a bow.

"What did Scourge do to you, Fiona?" Tails asked, unhappy about how she felt to treat him.

"He gave me somewhere to stay, when you all gave up on me."

"I didn't- we never gave up on you. When you left, Sonic made five trips to Moebius to see if he could find you, but all he ever found were the mad biomechanical monstrosities Miles always produced, and I spent weeks trying to create rings that would track you down. Heck, even Nicole couldn't get you out of her system. For almost a year after you left, she kept sending mission briefs to your info-mail, and she only stopped when I broke into it to see if that would give me any clue as to where you had gone. I discovered the amount that had piled up and told her to stop, told her that you wouldn't respond. Everyone noticed you were missing, even those who didn't see you go, those we didn't tell, but do you want to know what the worst was? All those weeks after you left, I finally put down my tools, resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn't find you. I almost killed myself. I almost activated the Last Resort I built into the chaos emerald. It would have wiped out everything within a kilometre. I was halfway out into sandopolis before I lost my nerve."

To Fiona, that was worse than any of the kicks or beatings she had received. She couldn't tell why…but it tore at her what she had done. She sank to her knees, cold washing through her.

"If it would have brought you back, I would have done." The words echoed in her skull, yanking her sharply back to the day she had left…

_"Pl- please…I don't care…I don't care if you don't care about me- just please! Don't go, not with him!" She had heard Tails say._

_"Such a poor little kid, he still doesn't get it." She had told Scourge, before addressing Tails. "For all your brilliance, you still don't get it. Scourge loves me, and you're trying to make me change my mind." And she had struck him, hard enough to knock him down._

_And Scourge had laughed._

She had it wrong back then…it wasn't Tails with a sick obsession for her…he had known what she would face…and he had tried to stop it, and she had hurt him for it…he had cared about her…and what had she done for him?

She stayed there, on hands and knees, hot tears running down her face, wetting her fur. Tails just watched her, slightly distanced, until he noticed something amid the pile of gear she had discarded. Ignoring her for a moment, he crossed to it and picked it up – a piece of small, crafted metal with a strand of wire protruding at it from an angle. He held the strand to his mouth and whispered: "You want me dead, come and try." And then threw it away.

He put one hand on her shoulder. "Come on, we have somewhere to be. You get to make your choice there, he's on his way."

She knew who 'he' was, and her head snapped round to stare at him with nothing less than undisguised terror in her eyes, past the tears.

"You- you didn't-"

"I'm not offering you a reprieve from him – that would be obsession. You have to reject him, and I can't tell him in your place."

"I- I never gave you an answer." She stuttered to him, shaking visibly from the fear and the cold.

"Then it won't matter, will it?" he even sounded cold. "Wipe your eyes, we have to go, and you don't want tears freezing in the wind, believe me."

They acquired boards from the shop, one of the few places in the resort that the mad dictator had no use for. Boarding gear was useless when it came to equipping robotic minions with weaponry, and he had bypassed the store without a second thought, completely unaware that two foxes were about to use them to get to the super emerald that they were all after.

* * *

"That bitch! She let herself get discovered and now I have to go and sort her shit out!" Scourge threw another item the length of the opulent room and watched it shatter against the stone wall.

"You're plan fail?" Miles remarked, without looking up from his book.

Scourge rounded on him. "And you were supposed to make sure she couldn't get found! You're just as much to blame as she is!" he roared.

"No, you were the one who sent her on this escapade, to retrieve an item that could very easily kill you if you use it. It was your idea to ask me to equip her with stealth tech, though you knew very well that my counterpart is capable of chaos sense." Miles had not done so much as raise his voice, nor deign to even glance at Scourge, yet he had just single-handedly shot down Scourge's entire rage. "Go after her, lose your temper like you always do, see what happens. Just don't come crying to me when 'I' mangle your limbs and send you back in a body-bag."

Scourge glowered at Miles, then wheeled and stalked from the room, saying nothing. He said nothing of following up on Miles' thoughts, but he was too proud of himself, Miles knew, and he herd and smelt the portal open as he left for Mobius.  
Once Miles was sure Scourge had gone, he stood and began the walk to his chambers. He had oh so wanted to kill him himself, but he and his counterpart were almost the same, and in the end, it didn't matter. Tails got his revenge, Miles got his Moebius – and Alicia, he remembered, as he passed her chambers.

* * *

The ride down was wild, wind tearing at their faces as they jinked and slalomed to avoid trees, rocks and other glacial features. Several times as he passed her, Tails caught Fiona smiling, or indeed laughing, at one point.

She felt great, it had been years since she had been to Ice Paradise, and though she was not here on holiday this time, it felt like it – Ice Cap zone had melted on Moebius, when the industry took over. Miles, though by no means sympathetic, had offered to take her on a holiday on Moebius at one point, but Scourge had got wind of it and had the placed bombed. Miles had defended her there and then, but later, in private, Scourge had let her known the full extent of his selfishness.

She decided to turn it into a race, for old time's sake, she told herself. She shifted her lithe form, moving alongside him, and nudged him in the ribs, watching him wobble slightly before speeding on ahead of him. He took up the challenge, launching off one of the ramps and spinning in the air, landing just a few feet in front of her, and gaining. She leant forward on the board, trying to gain speed and for a while they continued this high speed dance down the mountainside, until once again Fiona regained the lead and glanced back at him, smiling wildly. That moment of lapse was something she couldn't afford – not being a chaos adept, she didn't see the spur of ice jutting from the snow. All she felt was the world lurch, the board shoot out from under her, and then the snow as she landed heavily, rolling. She bounced, sure of the bruises she would receive and arms curled around here head, as a pair of arms, stronger than she remembered, swept around her and lifted her from the snow. She uncurled herself and lowered her arms, finding herself cradled in Tail's arms with the vulpine showing almost no discomfort from the stunt he had just pulled. She tilted her head slightly and…he was using his namesakes as ballast.

"You might want to watch where you're going." He told her, shouting to be heard above the wind.

She just smiled back, content to stay where she was as long as he didn't mind, until they reached the bottom, only a few minutes later. He set her down almost reverently, she noticed, slowly, so she could allow her feet to touch the ground and find her balance.

"We have to stop meeting like this." She joked at him.

"So…will you stop with the insults now?" he asked tentatively, still unsure of his status.

"Yes. As you said, I can decide then; I still have a little time."

"Just, please remember, that I just don't want you to go back to Scourge. You don't have to love me, you don't even have to like me, just don't hate me…"

She put one hand over his mouth to silence him. "you're so sweet…" she answered, kissing him quickly, relishing his face as he went bright red.

Tails was getting worried, this sudden change in behaviour, her allegiance…he would have to make sure of it, but later. "We're going to have to run." He told her, trying to change the subject now he was sufficiently embarrassed. He hadn't really had a serious relationship in his whole life, after the trauma of losing Fiona, and so he was still unaccustomed to how you were meant to act.

"OK.." Fiona muttered, unsure where he was going.

"I don't know If you've noticed yet, but I'm about as fast as Sonic is when I'm moving. Either I carry you, or I have to wait a couple of days while you cross the island."

"Carry me if you like, it gives us time to catch up. Just watch where you put your hands."

Tails blushed again.

"I meant the claws." Fiona added, catching his meaning.

"Oh- oh, yes, the claws." He inspected his hands. "Shall we?" he made a vague gesture meant to look chivalrous as he gathered her up in his arms once more.

"You lead." She told him, as he launched into the sky.

Indeed, they did very little other than talk the entire flight, mostly Tails explaining his many achievements and Fiona marvelling at them – she had little to tell of her own. The years spent with Scourge had allowed her little time of her own, and that was spent in Miles' marginally better company, either watching him work or having him try to sort out the most recent damage Scourge had inflicted on her. Tails had set up MilesCorp, created the Typhoon fleet, saved the world innumerable times, and written a few books on his work in the process. He talked of victories but also losses, taking no shame from his defeats but no pride from victory either. In a strange melancholy way it saddened Fiona, to see him so emotionless in his life, it was too much like Miles, his counterpart. She told him so when they landed, a wide cliff-top, the edge of the island, in rainbow valley.

"What happened to you, Tails?" she asked.

"I grew up."

"No, that's no excuse. I don't want to come back to another Miles, an emotionless figure bent on his work, only having any care for me because of how Scourge treated me. If that happens, I might as well go back to Moebius."

"I haven't had much time for emotion. If I ever allow myself to get attached to anyone, they end up being used as a weapon either by me or against me. If I ever allow myself to have that attachment…" his voice trailed off as Fiona took hold of his hands. She leaned in close to his ear, and whispered, "then why did you come back for me?" and kissed him on the neck.

"Oh come on fox boy, what happened to that honour of yours?" the romantic yet awkward moment was gone. That voice, he knew the snide tone that accompanied it, the pitch that reminded him vaguely of Sonic. He released Fiona, pushing her away as gently as he could, and wheeled on Scourge, who stood a few metres away, a smirk fixed on his features. When Tails didn't reply, he continued. "Thought you'd take my emerald, and pick up some sex while you're at it? Sorry for the wake-up call, but Fiona is with me, isn't that right?" he asked her, leering evilly.

Tails sized up his opponent. He still wore the same black leather jacket, flames on the wrists and back, Scourge's vain attempt to look 'biker' cool. He answered before Fiona could say anything. "Scars haven't healed yet? I must have dug deeper that I thought." He referred to the two slashes on Scourge's chest, where Tails had sliced open with his namesakes those years ago. "Anyway, at least I'm not going to develop erectile dysfunction in a few years, after the chaos energy finally takes its toll."

He could almost see fire flaring in Scourge's eyes. "You little sod, you little, naïve bastard. You think you can piss all over me and live?"

"No, urinating on you would require me to come closer than I would want. I know that I can insult you all I like and hand you your ass back along with a few new scars."

"Ooh, you're balls had dropped." Scourge chided him, "Now, be a good kid and get me the super emerald, will ya'?

"Be my guest." Tails gave him a mock bow. "But first, I have a welcome home gift." He bared his claws at the green hedgehog, red chaos energy flaring along them.

"Out of my way, little shit. I'm taking the emerald and my girlfriend and then going home, and you aren't going to stop me."

The chaos spear gouged a hole in the grass in front of him, and Scourge had to dive to the side to avoid a second.

"By the time I'm done with you, you won't be going home."

Scourge spun to his feet, the anarchy beryls bursting into the Mobius dimension from the beryl pen, beginning a slow orbit. "When I'm done there's going to be nothing left of you!" Scourge fumed at him, the beryls speeding up, faster and faster as they moved closer to him as they merged with his skin, lending him their power.

"Super Scourge?" Tails asked, bored. "Not exactly demure, is it?"

Scourge was empowered by the emeralds, but they brought with them an unfortunate colour change, the emerald green skin changing to a deep purple.

"You have to go super to beat me? Coward." Tails continued, "I'm facing a camp rip-off, who pussies out at the sight of me."

Scourge didn't answer, he just charged, a dark aura flaring off his form, as Tails backpedalled hurriedly and leapt into the air, namesakes spinning to give him height. He launched a couple of chaos spears as he rose, the first to burst off an energy shield, the other to miss. The dark fire caught Scourge's sleeve, and the jacket burst into flame as the fake leather caught fire and for a moment his opponent paused, tearing the rags off his form and tossing them away.

"At least those flames were real!" Tails taunted from above, launching more spears interspersed with ring bombs, and he lost Scourge in a cloud of smoke from multiple impacts.

Scourge rocketed after him, Tails weaving and changing direction as fast as he could to avoid the potentially lethal energy his opponent was unleashing, but he couldn't do it forever.

A thunderbolt sounded as they collided, anarchy energy firing and spitting off four-hundred rings worth of shielding.

In the undergrowth, away from the battle, Fiona sheltered, out of her league.

"Are…are you here to take it?" a voice, insubstantial, rang from behind her, and spun quickly, the pistol coming up.

Syna, fatigue showing from sixty years through a form insubstantial as mist, arms outstretched, fingers clutched a gem, fist-sized and glowing deep red. She had travelled, sixty years ago to this spot, following the seemingly pointless route the emerald had taken her on, to a meeting that she would not live to see, but be there to witness. The emerald was bridging the gap, breaking time between the now and then, allowing her to complete the journey necessary.

"Who are you?" the only words that came into Fiona's mind.

"It doesn't matter anymore…I don't know anything anymore…just take it, undo what I did wrong…I've come so far, never stopping, please…"  
Fiona had no idea what was happening, no idea at all who this girl was, she was so far out of her league it wasn't funny anymore. Was the girl seeing her the same way, insubstantial and ethereal? But then, there was the emerald, for the taking. For some reason, she reached out and took it, rather, let it topple into her hands, as Syna pitched forward, _through the grass._

She had the emerald – she had it, but she didn't know what to do with it. Now she saw what Tails meant by making a choice. Give it to Scourge, Tails would probably die, fighting till the last. Give it to Tails, it would give him the chance to win.

Above, Tails was getting hammered. He was smarter than Scourge, yes, more resourceful, yes, and this was his world as well, but Scourge was empowered with seven beryls, while Tails had only his single chaos emerald to give him power. He was beginning to feel cuts and bruises from where he had been unable to dodge the punches and kicks Scourge had levelled at him.

He drifted sideways, raking the hedgehog with his claws, driving them across the face allowing a weak golden light to leak out before the wounds sealed again.

He was getting nowhere – Scourge was near-invincible in his current state, whilst Tails was still his old self, quite vulnerable. He lashed out again, punches swift and strong just as his old mentor had taught him, forcing Scourge back pace by pace before the hedgehog lost height and appeared from beneath, crashing into Tails' midriff, singing and burning the fur there before Tails expended yet more rings to hold him off. Tails freed his arms from the grapple and swung his fist, chaos emerald held tightly within, once more across the scars left by his namesakes. The point of the emerald raked across it, turning the scar an angry shade of red, the anarchy energy shorted out by chaos power…

As Scourge raised both hands and let off an anarchy blast in Tails' face. The force of the explosion spun Tails away and pushed Scourge back from the impact, otherwise unharmed. The enhanced being scoured the black cloud summoned by the detonation for his target, until it came to him, rising from the inky depths within a crackling lightning shield. Scourge grinned at his damage – the shield had stopped him from dying, but now the fox was coloured by multiple gashes and tears all over his skin, his fur matted with congealing blood.

Fiona made her choice.

"hey, green britches, down here!" Scourge heard the call from below, and paused in his onslaught, batting Tails away with a swipe, looking down to Fiona.

He saw the super emerald in her hands. He dropped to the ground for it.

"You got it after all." His tone was placating, rather than patronising, for he knew how delicate this situation was. "You going to give it here?"

For a moment, she just stood there, and for a brief moment, Scourge thought that something was wrong, that he had just lost, until Fiona threw the emerald, straight for him. A little high perhaps, yet she was giving it to him! It was all he could do not to crow in victory.

His eyes fixed on the glowing gem, he saw nothing, saw nothing else as Fiona's hand moved to her belt and snatched the pistol from its holster and let loose the remaining shot from the powerful weapon, on an unerring aim into Scourge's left eye. She saw the bullet make impact and saw his eye fountain into an explosion of gore.

His hand went from a claw to a palm and he clamped his hand over the damage as the anarchy energies began to heal him.

"You bitch! I'm taking you home in pieces!" he roared at her, and with his free hand he let loose a stream of anarchy needles sprinting towards her through the air.

Something exploded between her and the needles, the bright, lethal stream showering away from the source of impact as yet another combatant entered the playing field.

Super Tails collided violently with Super Scourge, four limbs battering against his shield, the two forms rising into the sky once more.

Scourge pushed away is his eye healed finally, and the two combatants faced each other.

"Don't you even think about hurting her!" it was the first time Tails had raised his voice the entire battle, as he snapped his fingers and a dozen chaos spears burst to life all around him. As one they surged forward towards the purple life form, and he met equal resistance in anarchy needles, and the two meeting in stalemate before they broke and moved in close.

Scourge opened with an axe kick, his foot bouncing off a tail as it rose in defence, the other one knifing round to stab him through the chest. He didn't see it coming until the last moment, and though he jetted back, it struck off one of the scars, drawing a grunt of pain.

Blows were traded as energy was wasted as the two combatants fought, now out of spite more than reason – the emerald was lost to Scourge, he just had revenge left.

Tails kicked out with everything he had, fists and feet meeting as claws dug into Scourge's arms and his namesakes drove up past his guard, scraping across the old scars and drawing blood from him for the first time in the confrontation. It hurt and enraged him as he responded in kind, shifting his weight and forcing his fist across Tails' face as his other fired a short burst of anarchy needles, close range, into his opponent's closed hand.

The strike sent Tails reeling, but only briefly, the kitsune launching back into the attack only moments later, driving punch after punch towards Scourge until he gave up and head-butted him along the bridge of the nose, breaking it with a crack and a spurt of blood.

Out of instinct Scourge clamped a hand over his nose – though there was no real need – and his eyes left Tails for a moment to inspect the damage. A fatal mistake – he looked up again, Tails' had was inches from his face.

"Chaos blast." The words were muttered in the same monotone as before, but the detonation…the detonation tossed Scourge away like a ragdoll, unprepared as he was, spinning him to the ground with a crack. The energy from the release flash-fried the grass as Tails came down heavily on him, feet pinning him to the ground as his namesakes pistoned through Scourge's arms. Despite his invincibility he could not stop them from cracking the bone and despite his vanity he still screamed in agony. Staring through his pain-fogged vision, Scourge looked into Tails' eyes and saw no remorse.  
"You hope I would spare you? You think I would let you go, after the shit you put us all through? Normally I would say revenge is empty, not worth spending time on, but this time…" he leaned in close, "…this time, I don't give a flying crap. This is for me, this is for Sonic, for Sally, for Miles even, and for Fiona."

Scourge worked himself up for a reply, but he froze as his eyes fixed on Tails' fist, ascending slowly to above his head.

"Chaos judgement!" Tails shouted for all to hear, then brought his hand down upon his foe, releasing his most powerful attack directly into his forehead, shockwaves rippling out from the point of impact, uprooting foliage and tossing it away. Scourge began to disintegrate, from the hands and feet first, bits of him tearing away as Tails sent all of his pent up rage, all his anguish and hate into this strike against the cause of it all. Tails stared into Scourge's eyes the whole time, watching him as pieces tore off and disintegrate under the pure force of it all, until there was nothing left.

Tails stood, inspecting the devastation he had caused, Fiona standing untouched amidst it all, fear and relief shining from her eyes in equal measure.  
Releasing his control, Tails allowed his form to return to normal, the gold skin to turn yellow, the fur to flatten against his skin again, and he let the super emerald fall into his hand. He looked up at Fiona as she approached.

"I'm probably going to kill myself later for this, but I love you Fiona. I'm not going to tell you different, I won't lie, I love you, and it almost destroyed me when you left. I don't care what you think of me now, but I loved you and always have and I had to tell you." His voice was little more than a whisper, but it was enough.

"I love you, Tails, and I'm truly sorry." It was more than he had ever hoped to hear, and even the solemnity of the moment could not stop him running the distance to her and embracing her as a surge of emotions crashed through him, relief, happiness, love.

"We have things to do, people to make re-introductions to, a lot to sort out…" he began, but she kissed him and he could say no more. They kissed, tentatively at first, but for longer and longer until Sally was wondering how long it would be until they stopped for air. They finally broke away as Tails actually noticed she was there, watching him with something akin to surprise, one hand cradling the spear of Rhadamanthus.

"You have some explaining to do, Tails, and you too, Fiona. For now, let's settle for getting out of here before Echidna authorities arrive."

Fiona turned away, already afraid to face Sally again, so the squirrel princess explained, "Fiona, I don't know what just happened and I don't care, you can explain later, so for now just come with us."

"Please, Fiona, don't leave us behind again." It was Tails, a final attempt. He had tested her, with the emerald, and she had chosen him over Scourge.

"I- no, I won't this time, but Sally…All that comes to mind is that I'm sorry."

The squirrel was different in her eyes. "We've grown up Fiona, so have you." She said, as if reading Fiona's thoughts, "For now, Tails vouches for you and I can live with that, but there is lots to sort out before I can really be sure about you."

"I know…I know the shit I put all of you through, Tails filled me in, but I was never good with words when it mattered. I want to make it up, I just don't know how."

She allowed herself to be led away, a different life, an old one, to begin again.

* * *

**A/N: This is the final chapter of War in the Heavens, as you can see. I apologise for any loose ends that I may have missed, or if the finale was somewhat rushed, but because this was never meant to be continued beyond this, and I tried to wrap up the loose ends as much as I could.**


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